
Class HY^I 
Book ■ ■-' " ■ 



THE EDWIN C. DINWIDDIE 

COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 

TEMPERANCE AND ALLIED SUBJECTS 

(PRESENTED BY MRS. DINWIDDIE) 



J£„ C. D1NWIDDIE, 



p®IM MM 




,: 



AoBoWOKTELJI^CTiOT & COMPANY; 

JBL&M3FOKD, COOT. r 



" " 



PLATFORM ECHOES: 



OR, 



LIVING TRUTHS FOR HEAD AND HEART. 



ILLUSTRATED BY NEARLY 



FIVE HUNDRED THRILLING ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS, 

HUMOEOUS STORIES, PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND 

ADVENTURES, TOUCHING HOME SCENES, 

AND TALES OF TENDER PATHOS, 



DRAWN FROM 



©he Bright on& Sljaog 0tks of lift. 

By JOHN B. GOUGH. 

A UTHOR OF " SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW." 

WI"*> A HISTORY OF MR. GOUGH'S LIFE AND WORK, 

By REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 
E. C, E . ddie 



Supcrfilg Illustrate tottfj 
from ©n'smal Efsfgns fig tije Mati Eminent Ostitis. 



SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 



HARTFORD, CONN.: 

A. D. WORTHINGTON & CO., PUBLISHERS. 
1890. 




- 






-\ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, 

By A. D. Worthington and Company, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



SI t ••*£ 





N several occasions, to oblige 
English friends, I authorized 
the publication and corrected 
the proofs of notes taken dur- 
ing some of my public utter- 
ances. With these exceptions, 
for more than thirty years my 
words have been reported, printed, 
and sold with no regard to my wishes, 
without proper revision, and often 
with annoying and absurd mistakes. 
I have come to the conclusion that I have some personal 
right to their oversight, and also to the time and manner of 
their appearance. In addition, every year for a long time 
past, requests from various quarters have been made for 
authorized copies of this or that public utterance. 

One special inducement to submit them to the publisher 
has been the reception, to my surprise and pleasure, of 
many letters from Great Britain, United States, India, and 
Australia, from a few of which I extract such sentences as 
these : " I was induced by reading your speech to give up the 
drink, and begin a sober life, to which I have kept ever 
since." " I owe my position in life to reading one of your 
orations." (I should say here that the word oration was 



Vi PREFACE. 

never given by me to anything I ever said in public.) From 
another letter I quote these words : " My whole family are 
abstainers from the fact that one of your printed speeches 
came into my hands at a critical time in my life." Respect- 
ing the notes on other topics than temperance, I have re- 
ceived such expressions as these : " Since I heard you I have 
tried to be a better woman." " The effect on me of your 
lecture was to make me earnestly desire to be better, to live 
better." 

Fully sensible, as I am, of many faults and shortcomings 
in these records of the platform, I remember gratefully the 
sympathetic and encouraging words of a master of platform 
power, whose voice is now hushed in death, — Wendell 
Phillips, — who gave me many a kind and helpful word. 
Meeting him on a journey, and speaking of my lack of edu- 
cation and how much I felt it, he said in cordial tones, " Why, 
any scholar who hears you perceives at once your lack of 
educational training, so called," and then added with a smile, 
" But perhaps the world is all the better for that." 

Thus encouraged, and for reasons before stated, I offer 
this quiver of unpolished arrows in the hope that they may 
accomplish more in right and desirable directions than they 
could in any previous fragmentary appearance ; only adding 
that though there must of necessity be repetition in the 
arguments, there is no repetition in the facts or incidents. 




£* <0^yC 




jfrom ©rifltnal IBest'gns Urafon eipwsslg for tfjfe foorfc fig J. ©. &. UarUg, 
22Sm. 1L. Stjeppartr, ana £. 023. amilliams. 



1. PORTRAIT OF JOHN B. GOUGH. Engeaved on 

Steel Frontispiece 

Engraved expressly for this work from the original life-size painting by 
Sir Daniel Macnee,"R.S.A., presented to Mrs. Gough by the Directors of 
the Scottish Temperance League, May 22, 1855. Engraved in pure line and 
stipple by Mr. J. J. Cade, New York. 



10. 

11. 

12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 

16. 
17. 

18. 
19. 



ILLUSTRATED TITLE-PAGE (Full Page.) 

Designed by F. O. C. Darley . ... To face frontispiece 

Showing the beginning, middle, and end of a drunkard's career, and the 
peaceful old age of temperate and virtuous lives. 1, The Beginning — a con- 
vivial party of young men, 2, The Middle — the horrors of delirium tremens. 
3, The End— death in the gutter. 4, The happy old age of well-spent lives. 
The page presents a powerful contrast between two sides of life, one showing 
the reward of temperance and virtue, the other the results of intemperance 
and sin. 

PAGE 

Ornamental Heading to Preface 5 

Ornamental Initial Letter 5 

Engraved Autograph op John B. Gough 6 

Ornamental Heading to List of Illustrations .... 7 

Ornamental Heading to Contents 15 

South View of Mr. Gough' s Residence 2S 

Ornamental Heading to Rev. Lyman Abbott's Intro- 29 

duction 29 

Ornamental Initial Letter, showing the Worcester 

Yase made and presented to Mr. Gough in England, 29 

Engraved Autograph of Rev. Lyman Abbott 72 

"Hillside" — Residence of John B. Gough 14 

Ornamental Heading 71 

Ornamental Initial Letter 71 

Victims of Habit 73 

A Man we Often Meet 75 

Style Forty Years Ago 77 

Scene of the Wreck 7S 

The Boy who Swore by Old Dan Tucker SI 

vii 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 

20. Memories of the Past „ . 85 

21. "Come down wid ye, Thady" 88 

22. A "Desavin' Cratur" 89 

23. Lower Hall in Mr. Gough's House 92 

24. Ornamental Initial Letter 93 

25. On the Brink 96 

26. The Eesult of Smelling- 'round 98 

27. Webster Pleading with his Classmate 100 

28. "Get up! get up! the Train is Coming!" 101 

29. The Cat's Pledge 103 

30. "No! You have Deceived me!" 104 

31. "Now, Adam" 105 

32. Adam's Eeturn 106 

33. Adam's Exit from the Closet 107 

34. THE DEATH OF TOM. (Full Page.) Designed by F. O. 

C. Darley To face 110 

" Too late, Jem. Don't leave me ; don't leave me ! Oh, it is getting 
dark ; it is getting dark." Straightening himself up, while convulsions shook 
his frame, he said, " This is the last act of the play that is played out," and h« 
fell back dead. 

35. Ornamental Initial Letter 113 

36. Too Personal 115 

37. A Surprise to both Duellists 116 

38. The Man who Drinks because he is Cold 122 

39. The Man who Drinks because he is Hot 123 

40. "De Debbil says, 'Take 'em'" 125 

41. The "Fearful Example" 126 

42. A Dreadful Threat . 128 

43. Ornamental Initial Letter 131 

44. "Sir! Sir! The House is on Fire!" 133 

45. A Shilling Short 136 

46. A "Fo' Days' Meeting" 138 

47. A Puzzled Frenchman 144 

48. Betsy Jones 145 

49. Ornamental Initial Letter 148 

50. The Little Philanthropist 150 

51. A Brute in Human Form 151 

52. Transfixed with Horror 156 

53. Thankful for Small Favors 161 

54. "The Den I was Burrowin' in" 164 

55. Cutting a Dash 7^ 165 

56. Driven Out into the Storm 166 

57. THE MINEB AND HIS CONVEETS. A EEMAEKABLE 

SCENE. (Full Page.) Designed by F. O. C. Darley. 

To face 169 

"I say, Dick ! Dick is coming, Dick is coming ! Tom, Tom, look here ! 
Ah, that 's right, Tom. Now, lads, follow a good example." And fifty-eight 
men came tramp, tramp, tramp, on the platform. They seized the pen as if 
it were a peri of iron, and wrote as if they were graving their names into stone. 
That man did more work in ten minutes than I could do in ten hours. 



LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. 



IX 



58. Ornamental Initial Letter 170 

59. I take it "as a Medicine" 172 

60. Old Mixem's Cure All 177 

61. "Let Her Slide" 180 

62. Ornamental Initial Letter 184 

63. " Go Back, Back to Her, I Say " 186 

64. A FATAL LEAP. (Full Page.) Designed by F. O. C. 

Darley To face 188 

His face was pale as ashes. He clenched his fingers as if he would press the 
nails into the flesh, his lip curled over his white teeth in the agonies of death, 
and his eyes glared upon his companions with the ferocity of a tiger as he said, 
" Oh, why did you not hold me ? " Why did they not hold him ? It was too 
late ; the demon of drink had full possession of him, and no mortal power 
could have held him then. 

65. Saving a Husband from Disgrace 191 

66. Just Saved! 197 

67. "Oh, My Goodness!" 200 

68. A Disagreeable Neighbor 203 

69. Ornamental Initial Letter 206 

70. " I Sot, and Sot " 210 

71. Mr. Long's Accuser 212, 

72. Mr. Long 212 

73. The Prison Visitors 217 

74. A Unanimous Vote 218 

75. Love's Test. — The Men who Jumped 220 

76. The Man who did not Jump 220 

77. As She Was, and as She Is 223 

78. Ornamental Initial Letter 226 

79. "The Strands Began to Snap" 228 

80. The Physician's Discovery 233 

81. Ornamental Initial Letter 239 

82. "Aint it Queer?" 241 

83. "I'll not be Outdone by my Boy" 245 

84. A Peep Over the Fence 248 

85. BEST AT LAST. (Full Page.) Designed by F. O. C. Dar- 

ley To face 252 

Bruised, hattered, forlorn, friendless, motherless, hiding from an infuriated 
father, he had a little hymn to sing. . . . The gentleman hurried away for re- 
. storatives and help, came hack again in less than two hours, and climbed the 
ladder. There were the chips, there were the shavings, and there was the little 
motherless boy, with one hand by his side and the other tucked in his bosom 
— dead. 

S6. Ornamental Initial Letter 256 

87. "Drink's My Curse" 260 

88. "You Know who I am" 261 

89. Stimulus 267 

90. Ornamental Initial Letter 270 

91. "What a Fool I am" 271 

92. "Mary, Mary, I've Signed the Pledge" 275 

93. "It Came Nearer and Nearer" 276 

94. "Washed Ashore, and Friz to Death" 279 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

95. A Rag Show 282 

96. A Teacher Taught 283 

97. A DRUNKEN FIDDLER AND HIS AUDIENCE. (Full 

Page.) Designed by T. W. Williams .... To face 284 

Opposite a grog-shop, in a certain town, you might have seen a drivelling, 
Idiotic drunkard seated upon a box, with a slouched hat drawn over his eyes, 
and a fiddle in his hand, attempting to scrape out such music as would please 
the company of inebriates that surrounded him; and they, in turn, attempting 
to shuffle and dance, paying the miserable music-maker his wages in rum. 
This was the man and his employment in 1840. That man signed the pledge, 
and in three years he was a representative in Congress. 

98. Ornamental Initial Letter 290 

99. "I am not Mad" 293 

100. A Remarkable Horse 297 

101. The Miser of Marseilles 301 

102. The Philosopher and the Calf's Tail ....... 303 

103. The Big Boy and Little Dickey Tilton 304 

104. Ornamental Initial Letter 308 

105. Life in a Railway Car 311 

106. Only One could be Saved 315 

107. French Champagne Made in New Jersey 317 

108. "Well, it's Rather Dry" 321 

109. Ornamental Initial Letter 323 

110. "What for do he say zat of my Country?" ..... 329 

111. The Negro and the Dude 333 

112. "Hats Off" 336 

113. BETTY AND THE BEAR. THE HUSBAND'S ADVICE 

FROM A SAFE RETREAT. (Full Page.) Designed by 

F. O. C. Darley To face 338 

As the fight went on, he became excited. By and by he began to encour- 
age her, and shouted, " Well done, Betty ! That was a good knock. Now 
take him on the other side," and so on, till Betty hit the final blow and the 
bear gave a final kick. And then the husband came down from his safe 
retreat. " Well, that 's a bigger bear than I thought it was, Betty, and I 
consider we have done gloriously." When the work is done, " we," and when 
the work is to be done, " you." 

114. Ornamental Initial Letter 342 

115. One of My Listeners . = .... 346 

116. Despair ..... 348 

117. "Oh! It is Coming, Doctor" 353 

118. Only just a Spoonful 354 

119. Ornamental Initial Letter 358 

120. "i can see you with the naked hye " . 359 

121. A Training-school of Crime 360 

122. "BOOTS! BOOTS!" MY FLIGHT FROM LONDON STREET 

BOYS. (Full Page.) Designed by W. L. Sheppard. To face 362 

I went up Drury Lane all right, but when I passed into White Hart Street 
I heard the cry of " Boots! Boots! " And soon from every window, doorway, 
and alley seemed to come the cry of " Boots! Boots! " So I began to quicken 
my steps, and I heard the youngsters quickening theirs after me. Soon they 
swarmed on every side of me. I ran, they ran. They pelted me with pota- 
toes and carrots, etc. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



XI 



123. A Naughty Pair 365 

124. A Discovery 365 

125. Adversity 370 

126. DEAD. THE LITTLE HAND HELD UP FOR JESUS. 

(Full Page.) Designed by F. O. C. Darley . . To face 370 

"But, I say, Bobby, you can bold your band up, and if be should come 
round and see your band up, be 'd know you wos arter something. He held 
bis band up, but it dropped. He held it up again, and it dropped. He held 
it up the third time, and as it dropped he burst out crying, and said, "I '11 
give it up, I can't hold my hand up no longer." " Bobby, I don't want my 
pillow. You let me prop your elbow up with it." And the child — whom, 
perhaps, you would sweep off your doorstep, or turn away from with disgust 
— took his own hospital pillow, and, placing it under the elbow of his sick 
companion, propped up his arm. In the morning the little fellow lay dead, 
with bis band held up for Jesus. 

127. Prosperity 373 

128. Doomed — the Burning Ship in Mid-Ocean 375 

129. Ornamental Initial Letter 377 

130. Tell-Tale Shoes 379 

131. Anthony Burns, the Fugitive Slave 381 

132. Not a Circulating Library 383 

133. Seventeen Miles "wid dat Hoss" 385 

134. Explaining "de 'Lectric Telegraph" 388 

135. Ornamental Initial Letter • 390 

136. A Thin-skinned Man 391 

137. Temptation Resisted 393 

138. A Door to Ruin 394 

139. Sad Fate of One of My Companions 395 

140. Found Dead Among the Rushes 398 

141. A Frightful Vision 400 

142. "He Grips the Glass Again" 402 

143. Ornamental Initial Letter 407 

144. A Hand Stained with Blood 411 

145. A " Hindewidual " 413 

146. THE OLD BREWERY AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD AT 

THE FIVE POINTS, NEW YORK. As it appeared 

PREVIOUS TO BEING DEMOLISHED BY THE LADIES' HOME 

Missionary Society of the M. E. Church. (Full Page.) 
Accurately restored by T. W. Williams from an old sketch 
now in possession of The Five Points Mission . . To face 419 

1, Murderer's Alley, a narrow, dark passage, 148 feet long. 2, The prin- 
cipal groggery. 3, Entrance to a Den of Thieves ; a long, narrow passage, 
1% feet wide, and " dark as midnight." 4, Door connecting with Drunken 
Alley and the Den of Thieves. 5, Another entrance to the Den of Thieves. 
6, Door leading to a gambling area, or yard in the rear. 

147. Ornamental Initial Letter \ 423 

148. "The Little Chap that Told Me to Holler" .... 424 

149. His Money's Worth of Clothes 426 

150. An Unexpected Catastrophe 430 

151. An Awful Pitch Over 431 

152. Ha, Ha ! 432 

153. An Exciting Ride in California 438 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

154. Ornamental Initial Letter 441 

155. " Shall I Pray with You ? " 443 

156. My Audience of Outcasts 444 

157. " I Wonder Where My Boy Is " .446 

158. A Desperate Struggle 447 

159. A Moment of Danger 449 

160. Memories of My Youthful Days 452 

161. "She Burst out Crying and Dropped on her Knees" . 453 

162. A MINISTER'S DOWNFALL. — PREACHING HIS OLD 

SERMONS FOR LIQUOR. (Full Page.) Designed by 
George G. White To face 457 

And that doctor of divinity, who had preached the gospel to thousands 
for eight and twenty years, has since stood in a low dram-shop, with his 
face bruised and blackened, and a number of degraded and dissolute men jeer- 
ing him, — stood there and preached his old sermons for whiskey to stave of 
delirium tremens. 

163. Ornamental Initial Letter 461 

164. Julius Caesar's Downfall 465 

165. Interrupting a Family Row 466 

166. Elected Constable —" Father and Me." 468 

167. " Unperceived, He Opened the Cabin Door" 472 

168. Not a Friend in the World 476 

169. Ornamental Initial Letter 478 

170. "There's Mother" 483 

171. "It Seems but Yesterday" 485 

172. AN INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR McCONNELL SIX DAYS 

BEFORE HIS DEATH. (Full Page.) Designed by F. O. 

C. Darley To face 488 

He had a cane in his hand, and on the top was engraven, " Felix G. McCon- 
nell, Alabama. O God, have mercy on me." ... I shall never forget how he 
suddenly sprang to his feet, and, throwing his cane on the floor with a loud 
crash, said, " Gentlemen, you ask me to give up the drink. Ask me to sever 
my right hand from the wrist, and I can do it ; but to give up the drink — 
never ! " Six days after that he cut himself all to pieces with a bowie knife, 
in the St. Charles Hotel. That was his end. 

173. At Home. —Fireside Thoughts 493 

174. At Sea. — Tempest-Tossed 493 

175. Ornamental Initial Letter 496 

176. "GieMeaDeam" 498 

177. "I've Got a Terrible Bunch on My Side" ...... 501 

178. The Bunch 501 

179. A Dinner on the Sly 502 

180. An Ineffectual Appeal 504 

181. A MEMORABLE VICTORY. (Full Page.) Designed by F. 

O. C. Darley To face 507 

Coming up the hill on my return to the hall, a man in the wagon in front 
of us stopped, stood up, and cried, "Halt, halt! Look at the grog-shops 
closed at sundown. Thirty-five years I 've lived in this town and I never 
saw a sight like that. I 've seen drunkards go in at one door as a funeral 
started from the other. Three cheers for cold water." We gave the cheers, 
and the ex-dramsellers came out and helped us. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. x iii 

182. Drunken Jake 508 

183. A Sudden Invasion 511 

184. In Front of the Tavern 513 

185. " Look ! Look ! the Prairie is on Fire " 517 

186. Ornamental Initial Letter 518 

187. "Don't put me out, I'm a Teetotaler" 522 

188. The Past — Tuesday Night, Oct., 1842 ........ 525 

189. Ornamental Initial Letter 528 

190. Joe - 531 

191. One Year Afterwards 531 

192. "You're coming again, are you?" 534 

193. A TIMELY RESCUE. A MEMORABLE INCIDENT IN 

MY CAREER. (Full Page.) Designed by T. W. Wil- 
liams To face 536 

She was very drunk. The young men were pushing her about in the 
rudest manner. 'One would push her one way, and another the other. I said, 
" Do you call it sport to push that helpless girl about like that ? " Somebody 
said, " That's Gough." I said, " Yes, that is my name." They allowed me to 
approach the girl, who was swaying to and fro, — she could not stand still, — 
and was crying bitterly, uttering that wail pitiful to hear from an animal, but 
far more pitiful to hear from a woman. I said, " Where do you live ? " etc. 

194. An Unwelcome Guest . 543 

195. "Hum — signed Elizabeth" 545 

196. Ornamental Initial Letter 548 

197. A Wretched Wreck 552 

198. A Suspicious Place to Pass the Night 553 

199. An Unexpected Proceeding 554 

200. "I don't want to get up" 555 

201. Death Stared them in the Face 557 

202. Daddy Moses and Dick 560 

203. Ornamental Initial Letter 562 

204. "I — don't— know" 566 

205. An Unwilling Bridegroom 571 

206. Struck Bottom 574 

207. "Hurry up, I'm all Unravelling!" 575 

208. A "LIMPSY" COUPLE. SANDY AND THE LAIRD. (Full 

Page.) Designed by F. O. C. Darley To face 576 

Sandy helped the laird on the horse, but unfortunately he was this time 
mounted the wrong side before. " Now, Sandy, gie me the bridle ; gie me 
the bridle, Sandy." " Wait till I find the bridle. There is na any bridle, 
and there is na any place for a bridle," said Sandy. " Gie me the bridle, 
Sandy; I must hae one to steer the beast wi," exclaimed the laird. "Ah, 
laird," replied Sandy, " here 's a miracle. The horse's head 's aff, an' I can- 
na find the place where it was, and there 's naething left but a long piece o' 
his mane." 

209. For Life 580 

210. Ornamental Initial Letter 582 

211. An Obliging Husband 5S4 

212. Two O'clock in the Morning. "Ish it the Sun, or ish 

it the Moon?" 587 

213. "Oh, Sandy, I'm havin' an awfu' Tumble!" 593 

214. " I will Fight You " 594 



XIV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



215. A Tough Patient 595 

216. Ornamental Initial Letter 597 

217. A Truthful Signboard 598 

218. On Exhibition 599 

219. A Terrible Reality 605 

220. "YOU SAY DAT AGAIN, NlGGER!" 611 

221. "John, come Home, the Fire is Burning Brightly" . . 613 

222. Ornamental Initial Letter 617 

223. THE CAUSE OF LONDON WANT AND WOE. SATURDAY 

NIGHT IN A LONDON BAR-ROOM. (Full Page.) De- 
signed by W. L. Sheppard .To face 622 

I saw women go in, with babes in their arms looking as if they had been 
born to suffer and gasp and die — poor, pallid, rheum-eyed wretches, drinking 
their liquor. I saw little bundles of rags standing on tip-toe to put the money 
on the counter, and receiving whiskey in exchange. One little girl had but 
one garment on her, but she had her bottle filled and took it away. I saw, 
everything from a blacking-bottle to a tin pail, brought there to be filled 
with liquor. 

224. A Pettifogging Shyster 626 

225. Exhausted Patience 628 

226. The Jurymen — Ten of whom ate the Bacon 631 

227. "Oh, Buy me a bit of Bread, for I am Hungry" ... 634 




"hillside" — residence of the late JOHN b. gough. 




CHAPTER I. 

HABIT — ITS POWER, USE, AND ABUSE — HOW TO SUBDUE A 
TYRANT AND SECURE A FRIEND. 

What I Aim to Give — The Lessons of Experience — A Peculiar Clock — 
"What on Earth Will That Fellow Do Next?" — " Oh, I Bite My 
Nails!"— Ridiculous Habits — Scene at a Railway Ticket-office — Mem- 
ory— Recognizing a Deserter After Thirty Years — Slaves of Fashion — 
Description of the Suit I Wore at Twenty-one — The " Style " Forty Years 
Ago — A Stunning Attire — A Remarkable Inventory — Avarice — " Only 
a Little More " — The Vice of Lying — The Habit of Swearing — The Boy 
Who Swore by "Old Dan Tucker" — "I'm Sot, Yes, I'm Sot"— Daniel 
Webster's Testimony — Two Words Spoken in Season — Ruin and Re- 
morse — "By and By" — A Persistent Lover — A Narrow Escape — 
" Come Down Wid Ye, Thady " — The Warfare of Life .... 71 



CHAPTER II. 

TO YOUNG MEN — SOWING THE WIND AND REAPING THE 
WHIRLWIND— A TALE OF RUIN, REMORSE, AND DEATH. 

Sticking One's Hand in a Rattlesnake's Den — Beware ! — " Captain, There 's 
One of 'Em" — Sowing Wild Oats — Gliding Down the Stream — "Be 
You a Drugger?" — The Yerdant Young Man in Search of "Scentin' 
Stuff "— Smelling Round for the Right Thing — A Sniff That Astonished 
Him — The Story of Daniel Webster's Classmate — How Webster Tried 
to Save Him — His Tragic Death — "Get Up ! Get Up ! The Train is 
Coming!" — Cries of Despair from the Pit — A Road Strewn with 
Spectres — The Most Painful Scene I Ever Witnessed — Why the Boy 
Thrashed the Cat — A Cold Day for Puss — An Unexpected Scene at 
the Marriage Altar — The Story of Adam and His Whiskey Jug — 
Cramming Adam into the Closet — A Laughable Story — A Story of 
Ruin and Death — "Tom, Old Fellow, is This You?" — "Too Late, 
Jem, Don't Leave Me" — Taking the Wrong Direction. . . 93 

xv 



xv i CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

FRIEND OR FOE?— THE DIVIDING LINE — WHERE DO YOU 
STAND ? — SLAVES OF FASHION — LUDICROUS INCIDENTS. 

The Word " But " — Popping the Question — Anecdote of Dr. Lawson — A 
Slim Congregation — A Sermon That Was "Too Personal" — How 
Mrs. Remington Stood It — A Duel in the Dark — Retreating Up the 
Chimney — A Surprise to Both Parties — Giving a Reason — Defining 
Men's Position — " Three Cheers for Elder Gray" — The Bank Cashier's 
Story — The Reason Why — Comical Excuses for Drinking — Grounds 
for Suspicion — Letting Down the Bars — An Ugly Threat — Catching 
the Measles — Drinking in Society — Sipping in "Style" — Fashionable 
Dissipation — Silly Customs — A Ludicrous Picture — The Dutchman and 
His Lost "Poy" — Story of the Tempted Negro — A Coveted Pair of 
Boots — " The Devil Says Take 'Em" — Queer Ideas of Faith — " Good- 
ness Gracious ! Has It Come to That ? " — Funny Incidents — Forward — 
God Speed the Right 113 



CHAPTER IV. 

BLUNDERS, COMICAL, CURIOUS, SERIOUS, AND CRIMINAL, 
AND PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEM — FUNNY STORIES. 

Various Sources of Blunders — Heading a Boy in a Barrel — Absent-minded 
People — Anecdote of Dr. Duncan — Amusing Incidents — Ministerial 
Blunders — The "Pibroek and the Slogan"— The "Coisoned Pup" — 
Laughable Mistakes — Blunders of the Past — Blunders of Society — Irish 
Bulls — Killing a Man Twice— The "Red Cow" — Common Errors — 
Misuse of Words — Blunders in Language — A Musician with Carved 
Legs — Religious Horses — Human Parasites — The Curse of Mormonism— 
Serious Blunders — Sowing Dragon's Teeth— Office Seekers— How to 
Secure Honest Legislation — Curious Blunders in Literature — Sacrificing 
Sense to Rhyme — The Lawyer and the Sailor — Neatly Caught — Funny 
Blunders — A Viper with Feet — " No. 45, Stick No Bills "— " Let Her 
Drop" — Moulting Angels — Take Your Soundings —The Prodigal 
Son , ' . '. 131 



CHAPTER V. 

RETRIBUTION — PLAIN TALK AND PLAINER FACTS — REMI- 
NISCENCES OF MY DARK DAYS — DELIRIUM TREMENS. 

Plain Talk to a Scotch Audience — Street Sights and Scenes After Dark — 
Wretchedness and Woe — "Jem, Is My John in There?"— A Poor 
Woman's Plea — A Cowardly and Brutal Husband — Incident After Inci- 
dent—What I Saw on One of My Exploring Expeditions — Personal 



CONTENTS. X vii 

Experiences — Scenes I Have Witnessed — Their Effect Upon Me — 
Memories of My Days of Dissipation — A Terrible Picture of Delirium 
Tremens — A Victim's Testimony — Peculiarities of the Disease — A 
Horrible Experience — Transfixed With Terror — My Own Experience — 
Civility and Incivility — How I Was Snubbed in Church — Reminiscences 
of My Dark Days — A Reckless Act — The Drunkard's Sleep — Memory a 
Curse — A Forgiving Wife — The Hardest Audience I Ever Faced — I Am 
Discouraged — The Miner Who Spoke After Me — His Wonderful 
Speech — Tramp, Tramp, Tramp — Buckle On the Armor . . . 148 



CHAPTER VI. 

'AS A MEDICINE"— A FAIR NAME FOR A FOUL THING — A 
PRECIOUS SCOUNDREL WITH A PIOUS FACE. 

Fault Finders — A Tippling LL.D. — A Cheese Argument — Scene at a 
Dinner Party — Drink as a Medicine — Doctors Who Prescribe Liquor — 
A Good Deal and Often — Effects of Alcohol on the Nervous System — 
Testimony of Two Thousand Physicians — A Distinguished Physician's 
Opinion — Diseases Produced by Alcohol — Personal Experience of an 
Eminent Surgeon — My Own Experience — An Exceedingly Suspicious 
Mixture — A Compound Fearfully and Wonderfully Made — Extraordi- 
nary Prescriptions — Mrs. McCarthy's "Noggin of Rum" — How the 
Upholsterer Got Even with the Doctor — A Good Story — Anecdote of 
Rev. Mr. Reid — " Ask My Doctor ? " — Sticking to the Same Remedy for 
Seven Years — An Offer to Loan a Thousand Dollars — Chasing a 
Bubble — My Visit to Werner's Room — A Delightful Afternoon — A 
Musical Feast 170 



CHAPTER VII. 

SAFETY BETTER THAN" RISK — TOUCHING HOME-SCENES — 
STARTLING FACTS AND UNDISPUTED TESTIMONY. 

Human Sacrifices — A Mother's Sad Story — Turning a Dissipated Son out 
of Doors — My Interview with Him — On the Edge of a Precipice — A 
Thrilling Incident — Mad With Delirium Tremens — A Fearful Leap — A 
Devoted Wife — A Story from Real Life — That Little Word "No" — 
The Yankee Merchant and his Eggs — A Laughable Story — Startling 
Facts — The Greatest Swindle of the Age — What I saw in a Distillery — 
Effect of Liquor on Animals — How it Affects the Human Body — A 
Most Extraordinary Story — A Physician's Horrible Experiments — A 
Corpse Distended with Liquor Gas — Puncturing the Body and Lighting 
the Gas in Sixteen Places — Authentic and Undisputed Testimony — The 
Child's Rescue — A Thrilling Scene — A Very Obstinate Deacon — A 
Funny Story — The Dutchman and His Setting Hen — Record of a Noble 
Woman — My Disagreeable Neighbor 184 



xviii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FACT AND FICTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE — SMILING FACES 
AND TREACHEROUS HEARTS — MEN WHO WEAR MASKS. 

Variety the Spice of Life — Difficult Things for Me to do — What I Aim to 
do — Life often a Disguise — Snakes in the Grass — Men Who Wear 
Masks — Duels, Debts, and " Innocent Amusements" — A Persistent 
Collector — " I '11 Fix Ye " — The Boy and the Cherry Pie — Absurd Sen- 
tences — Amusing Illustrations — White Lies — Story of a Minister, a 
Bull, and a Bass Viol — A Matter-of-fact Musician — The Old Lady who 
was Struck by Lightning — Loving ' ' Everyting zat is Beastly ' ' — Woman' s 
Rights — A Vision of Eden — " Bridge ! Bridge ! ! " — An Animated Poli- 
tical Discussion — Its Sudden End — A Laughable Story — A Cool Boarder 
— His Opinion of His Landlady's Butter — Choosing Between Three 
Lovers — The Captain's Device — How it Worked — Wasted Lives — 
Human Wrecks — Real Heroes 206 



CHAPTER IX. 

IN THE TOILS OF THE TEMPTER — CHARMED UNTIL CHAINED 
— THE BATTLE OF LIFE — A STAINED RECORD. 

The Old Lady and the Haystack — Driving Nails in One's Own Coffin — The 
Green-eyed, Fiery-tongued Serpent — Robbing Birds' Nests — Suspended 
in Mid-air — A Frightful Position — Only a Single Strand Between Life 
and Death — A Thrilling Incident — Narrow Escape — My Frolic with a 
Child — A Boy Again — The Drunken Loafer — Look on this Picture, 
then on That — Youth and Old Age Side by Side — A Picture for Young 
Men — Past, Present, and Future — A Physician's Story — A Pathetic 
Incident — Alone — A Night in the Cold and Dark — A Little Girl's Sad 
Story — The Old Lady's Feelings — "A Certain-sort-of-Goneness " — 
Nearer and Nearer to the End — A Stained Record — Life is What You 
Choose to Make it — " Where Are Those Dogs Going ? " — Treasures Laid 
up Above — Life's Battlefield — Honorable Scars — A Disgraced Regiment 
Winning Back its Colors — Honor Retrieved 226 



CHAPTER X. 

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE — THE PATHOS OF LIFE — 
CHILDREN BORN TO SIN AND SORROW. 

Tell-tale Scars — A Modern Life of Moses — Underrating the Capacity of 
Children — A Boy's Idea of How Flies are Made — " Putting on 'em To- 
gether, and a-Fitting of 'em" — Saving Half Fare — "Only Ten, in the 
Cars " — A New Way to Sign the Pledge — A Father who Would not be 



CONTENTS. 



XIX 



Outdone by His Boy — A True Incident — What the Jug Contained — 
Value of Children's Aid — An Incident from My Own Experience — Cries 
of Distress — A Peep Over the Fence — A Triumphal Procession — What 
a Temperance Boy Accomplished — An Army Officer's Story — Charity 
Children — A Tour Through a Tenement House — What was Discovered 
Under the Rafters — A Dying Little Waif — Hiding from Father — 
Friendless and Motherless — An Affecting Scene — The Dying Boy's 
Hymn — Death in a Garret — Rest at Last — How a Minister Argued the 
Points — Convinced — God Bless the Children 239 



CHAPTER XL 

MT POSITION DEFINED — REASON AND REVELATION — THE 
CURTAIN LIFTED — TALES OF THE FALLEN. 

A Titled Toll-Man — Learning versus Common Sense — Our Standpoint — 
An Actor with a Proud Record — Incidents of my First Visit to Califor- 
nia — " Help Me Out of This Hell " — A Cry of Agony — " Drink 's My 
Curse" — Lifting the Curtain — Secrets of the Charnel House — My Inter- 
view with a Physician — " It 's No Use, I 'm a Lost Laddie, Good-by " — 
A Clergyman's Sad Downfall — Employed as a Hostler in a Stable — 
"You Know Who I Am, go Away from Me " — "Lost! Lost! LOST!" 
— An Explorer's Testimony — An Interesting Narrative — A Campaign 
Full of Hardship and Danger — Soldiers Without Grog — What they 
Endured — Sir Henry Havelock's Report — Storming a Fortress after a 
March of Forty Miles — Sitting on a Hornet's Nest — A Boy's Com- 
position on a Pin — Stimulus not Strength . . 256 



CHAPTER XII. 

WHO ARE THE VICTIMS ? — LIFE IN A BAR-ROOM — LIFE 
HISTORIES TRACED IN TEARS AND WRITTEN IN BLOOD. 

The Next Morning after a Spree — Maddening Thirst — A Visit to a Gin 
Shop — Scenes Inside — Victims at the Bar — Horrible Wrecks and 
Bloated Sots — The Suicide's Death-bed — Dreadful Scenes — The Ruling 
Passion Strong in Death — "Mary! Mary! I have Signed the Pledge " — 
The Sailor's Speech — A Realistic Dream — Life Histories Traced in Tears 
and Written in Blood — Women who Drink in Low Life — Fearful Degra- 
dation — The Dead Mother and Her Babe — The Negro Jury's Ridiculous 
Verdict — Women who Drink in High Life — A Sad Story — An Awful 
Death — An Audience of Drunkards — James McCurrey — Inviting a Sot 
to Sleep in his House — Burning the Bed Clothes next Day — Noble Act 
of a Noble Man — What Followed — The Prize Fighter's Story — Saved 
by Kindness — The History of a Grog-shop Fiddler — The Shipwreck — 
Man the Lifeboat ! 270 



XX CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CUEIOSITY — STRUGGLES AM) TRIUMPHS OF MEN OF GENIUS 

— STORIES OF INQUISITIVE AND MEDDLESOME PEOPLE. 

Curiosity; What Is It? — What it Has Led To — Utilizing Steam — Thrown 
into a Madhouse — "lam not Mad " — Left to Die — The Kilsby Tunnel 

— Hidden Quicksand — Solving the Problem — Stephenson's Stupendous 
Undertaking — The Electric Telegraph — Early Struggles of Prof. Samuel 
Morse — Gloomy Prospects — Help at Last — Unknown Heroes — Pick- 
wick and the Cabman — A Very Ancient Horse — An Inquisitive Com- 
panion—Judging from Appearances — "What Will You Give?" — A 
Printer's Self -Denial for His Little Blind Sister — A Noble Act — The 
Miser of Marseilles — His Will — Why He Hoarded His Gains — An Inci- 
dent in a Sleeping Car — A Bachelor's Experience — Taking Care of the 
Baby — Shakespeare's Skull — Story of the Philosopher and the Calf's 
Tail — Things We Do Not Kjiow — Queer Reasons — " Who Made You ? " 

— Five Pounds of " Ditto " — Wonderful Scientific Facts ... 290 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RUGGED ROAD TO SUCCESS — HEROES AND HEROISM IN 
HUMBLE LIFE — THRILLING INCIDENTS AND STORIES. 

Patience and Perseverance Necessary to Success — The Man who First 
Thought of the Steamboat— "Poor Fellow; He's Crazy Yet" — His 
Last Request — A Nobleman's Foolish Boast — Eating the Boiler of a 
Steamboat — Among the Cornwall Miners — A Thrilling Incident — 
Touching off a Blast at the Bottom of a Deep Shaft — A Moment of Ter- 
rible Suspense — "Up with Ye! I '11 be in Heaven in a Minute " — An 
Act of Noble Self-sacrifice — A Hero in Humble Life — The Explosion — 
Descending the Shaft — A Champagne Factory in New Jersey — Stepping 
into the Slush — Burnt Boots — A Hard Fight — Fable of the Cat and 
the Wily Mouse — Getting the best of the Cat — A Humorous Story — 
The Old Couple who "Swore off " — "Well, I will if you will" — A 
Meal of Toasted Cheese — Building the Temple 308 



CHAPTER XV. 

GOSPEL TEMPERANCE — ILLUSTRATIVE INCIDENTS AND 
STORIES — LEAVES FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE. 

Why I Do Not Preach the Gospel — The Meanest Man I Ever Knew — The 
Grace of God — My Belief — Found Dead — The Frenchman and the City 
Missionary — An Honest Opinion— An Emphatic Statement — "Bosh" 
^-Drinking First and Finding an Excuse Afterwards — A Clergyman's 



CONTENTS. xxi 

Story— " I Take it as a Medicine" —A Dandy's Worthless Adyice — A 
Negro's Practical Help — Power of Man's Will — My Horror of Drunken- 
ness—Terrible Dreams— "It Tasted Good"— My Idea of Sin— Want 
of Cordiality in Our Churches — Chilly Reception to Strangers — My Own 
Experience — Painful Truths — A Novel Way of Getting Acquainted — 
Looking Back Thirty Years — A Good Story — Betty and the Bear — The 
Husband's Sudden Retreat to the Rafters — A Plucky Wife — " Take Him 
on the Other Side, Betty !"-"fe" Have Done Gloriously . . 323 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SLIPPERY PLACES — TRAPS FOR THE UNWARY — PATHETIC 
SCENES AND INCIDENTS — HOME SHADOWS. 

Alsopp's Breweiy— An Incident of My Visit to Old Virginia — Firm Con- 
victions — Ridiculous Arguments of Women — Extracts From Letters I 
Have Received — When Does Drinking Become a Sin ? — How a Church 
Member Behaved at One of My Lectures — Moderate Drinking — How 
the Church Regards It — A Quaker's Advice to His Son — How Not to 
Get Drunk — The Power of Will — The Fakir of India — Cries of De- 
spair — The Curse of the World — The Little Cripple — A Pitiable Sight- 
Dreadful Afflictions — "I Am So Tired" — Pathetic Incidents — A 
Father's Prayer — Touching Home Scenes — " Hush ! Hush ! Hush ! " — 
Dealing With Facts — A Father's Sad Story — A Terrible Scene — The 
Power of Appetite — A Minister's Experience — A Night of Agony — 
Wrestling with the Destroyer — An Awful Fight — Onward, Upward, 
Victory 342 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE? — WAIFS AND STRAYS OF CITY 
STREETS — LIFE IN RAGGED HOMES — HOMELESS CHILDREN. 

Boys of the Street — Danger of Chaffing Them — Can They Be Rescued? — 
A Scene I Once Witnessed — Training-Schools of Crime —Life Below the 
Surface — A City Slum — Dens of Iniquity and Vice — Filth and Squalor 
on Every Side — Herding Together Like Animals — My New Pair of 
Boots — Trying Them to See How They Fit — I Am Assailed by Swarms 
of Boys — " Boots ! Boots !" —Pelted with Potatoes and Carrots — My 
Ignominious Flight — The Boys and the Pumpkin Seeds — An Anxious 
Farmer— An Extraordinary Story of Crime — Appalling Facts — An 
Affecting Story of Hospital Life —Two Little Invalids — One Crushed, the 
Other Starved — " Bobby, Did You Ever Hear of Jesus ?" — Propping Up 
the Sick Boy's Arm — Dead; His Little Hand Held Up for Jesus — A 
Street Scene in London — The Claims of Humanity — The Burning 
Ship — A Noble Act — True Heroism 358 



xx ii CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

NOW AND THEN; OR, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE — PER- 
SONAL EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Past, Present, and Future — What We Owe to the Past — Our First 
Century — One Hundred Years Ago — A Bundle of Stamps — Exciting 
Times — A Memorable Snow-ball Fight — Discovering Tea in Her Hus- 
band's Shoes — " Disperse, Ye Rebels " — Determined Patriots — " Who 
Is That Person ?" — " Will He Fight ?" — Antony Burns, the Fugitive 
Slave — How He Was Marched Through the Streets of Boston — Wonder- 
ful Progress — Fifty Years Ago — Grand Achievements — How We 
Printed When I Was a Boy — The Light of Other Days — Travelling in 
the Olden Time — Personal Experiences — Three Miles an Horn* — "I 
Must Take a Pill" — My Ride on the First Railroad Built in America — 
The Electric Telegraph — Reminiscences of My Boyhood — The Tele- 
phone — The " Fire Cart" —An Old Couple's Idea of Telegraphing — A 
Negro's Description — The " Puir Whales " — Jonathan Hull — " I'm the 
Nineteenth Century " 377 



CHAPTER XIX. 

DANGER SIGNALS —NOTES OF WARNING FROM EARLIER 
DAYS AND SCENES — RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST. 

Lamentable Ignorance — Thin-skinned People — How Some of Them Show 
Their Indignation — Proving a Man a Liar — Gentility is Not Always 
Respectability — Clothes Do Not Always Proclaim the Man — "A Man's 
a Man for a' That " — The Curtain Lifted — A Peep Behind the Scenes — 
Personal Recollections — My First Address in Boston — Recalling My 
Theatrical Days — Companions of My Youth — Tragic Deaths — Fate of 
Some of My Comrades — An Incident in Glasgow — A Dastardly Act — 
Terrible Consequences That Followed — Found Dead Among the Rushes — 
My Yisit to the Indianapolis Lunatic Asylum — Raving of Devils, Snakes, 
and Creeping Things — "Oh! How They Glare at Me!" — "They 
Creep! They Crawl!" — Awful Scenes — Graphic Pen Picture of a 
Toper — The Devil's Workshop — Satan's Abode — Calling His Satellites 
Around Him — Alcohol, the Right Hand of the Devil — An Uncom- 
promising Fight 390 



CHAPTER XX. 

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR ? — LIFE IN THE BACK STREETS OF 
NEW YORK— VOICES FROM THE SLUMS. 

Fast Young Men — Seeing a Little of Life — A Sea Captain's Story — What 
One Glass of Rum Did — A Young Man's Story — A Son's Hand Stained 



CONTENTS xxiii 

with Blood ! — "Out, Damned Spot " — What is a True Gentleman ? — A 
Letter Carrier's Stoiy — Calling Her Neighbor a "Hindewidual " — "I 
TJps with a Pail of Water," etc. — Leaders of Society — Women Who Fol- 
low Them — John Pounds, the Portsmouth Cobbler — Noble Women — 
Clara Barton's Self-sacrifice and Heroism — The Iron Cross of Germany — 
The "Old Brewery" in New York — Murderers' Alley — What a Police- 
man Told Me — A Dreadful Locality — Human Fiends —Stripping a 
Corpse and Selling the Grave Clothes — Raising the Money to Buy the 
Pl ace _ A Memorable Meeting — A Street Scene in New York — Little 
Mary Morrison— God Speed the Right 407 



CHAPTER XXI. 

WILL IT PAY?— LIFE'S OPPORTUNITIES — GROTESQUE SCENES 
AND AMUSING STORIES — ON THE BRINK. 

Men Who Cannot Understand a Joke— " The Little Chap That Told Me To 
Holler "— First-class Stupidity— " Comfortably " Full — The Stingy 
Drinker — Drink's Direful Work — Breaking a Mother's Heart — Scenes 
in a Lunatic Asylum — Raving Idiots- 1 - A Tipsy Lover — A Visit to the 
Pig-sty — An Unlooked-for Catastrophe — Another Pig in the Pen — "I 
Am as Good as Any of You" — Fighting the Pump — An Unceremonious 
Tip-over — The Tipsy Students — Decidedly Muddled — Kicking Each 
Other Out of Bed — A Grotesque Scene — The Indian and His Fire- 
water — "Only This Once" — A Clergyman's Downfall — A Wife's 
Story — In Jail — Reminiscences of Forty Years Ago — An Appeal to 
Young Men — Coach Driving in California — A Death-bed Scene — "I 
Can't Find the Brake " — Sowing Wild Oats 423 



CHAPTER XXII. 

OUR DUTY TO THE FALLEN — BRANDS PLUCKED FROM THE 
BURNING — STORY OF THE WICKEDEST MAN IN NEW YORK. 

An Incident of the War — Clean Linen First, Religion Afterwards — Work 
Among the Poor and Depraved — Dens of Yice — Bread Before Tracts — 
Speaking to an Audience of Eight Hundred Outcasts — The Wickedest 
Man in New York — Story of Orville Gardiner — A Mother's Love for a 
Wayward Son — A Thrilling Experience — A Nine Hours' Fight with a 
Jug of Whisky — A Thoroughly Reformed Gambler and Prize-fighter — 
Tempted at Communion Service — Cutting it Off "as Square as a Piece 
of Cheese" — Daily Trials — Trusting in God — My Boyish Dislike of 
Attending Church — Incident of a Lecture Tour in Ohio — Sad Down- 
fall of a Once Devoted Christian Woman — A Minister Drunk in His Own 
Pulpit — Scene at One of My Lectures — Selling the Last Blanket for 
Rum — Death and Desolation — The Breach in the Dike — A Thrilling 
Story of Holland Life 441 



Xxiv CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

MEN AND METHODS, MANNERS AND MORALS OF OUR OWN 
TIMES — ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS. 

Reflection — Aping Extravagance — Beginning Life Where Their Fathers 
Left Off — Odd Reasons for Getting Married — Butterflies of Fashion — 
Old Aunt Chloe — " Tie 'Em Together " — The Husband Who Proclaimed 
Himself "a Regular Julius Caesar"— What His Wife Thought About 
It— "Who Keeps This House?"— How the Question Was Settled- 
Family Jars —" Will the Sheriff Sell Me?"— Power of Money — Spoils 
of Office — "Grandpa, Have a Weed ?" — Old-time Politeness — Dif- 
ference Between " Then " and " Now " -"I Knocks My Boys Down and 
They Ain't Good" — Influence of Example — A Father's Cruel Act — 
"Do It Again, Papa" — Henry Clay and the Farmer — John on His 
Knees — The Ship Captain and the Sailor — Past and Present — Elisha 
Kent Kane — A Remarkable Career — One of Sin's Victims — A 
Dark Picture — Broken Hopes and Buried Aspirations — The Alabaster 
Box 461 



CHAPTER XXIV. - 

FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS — LESSONS DRAWN FROM LIFE — 
HUMAN WRECKS — ILLUSTRATIVE STORIES AND FACTS. 

Death's Harvest Field — The Fatal Sliding Scale — What I Saw in a Railway 
Carriage — A Terrible Spectacle — Father, Mother, and Child Intoxi- 
cated — A Mother's Story — The Rapids at Niagara Falls — Fascination of 
Danger— A Terrible Tragedy — " Stand Back! Stand Back!"— The 
Fatal Plunge — Story of the Poor Emigrant Woman — A Mother's Love — 
" Fire ! " — " Make Way There. Police ! " — Temptations of a Great 
City — An Incident of Chicago Life — Return of the Prodigal Son — A 
Scene in a London Cellar — A City Missionary's Story — Horace Greeley — 
We Visit Senator McConnell — His Wretched Appearance — Tender Re- 
gard for His Wife — A Precious Memento — " Give Up the Drink? 
Never!" — His Awful Death — A Two-bottle Man — The Old Scotch 
Bailie ! — Fire-side Thoughts — Captain Creighfon and the Ship "Three 
Bells" — Terrible Suspense — Great Rejoicing 478 



CHAPTER XXV. 

POWER OF EXAMPLE — LIFE IN A GREAT CITY — STORY OF 
DRUNKEN JAKE — SCENES IN MY EARLIER DAYS. 

"Don't Believe It " — Incredulous People — Street Children — Little Crea- 
tures in Tatters and Filth — The Mouth of Hell — "I Have a Terrible 



CONTENTS. xxv 

Bunch on My Side " — Fool's Pence — A Good Story — " Dip Your Scone 
in Your Own Gravy " — A Tough Audience — A Leaf from My Experience 
in Connecticut — A Marvellously Interesting Story — Thrilling Scenes — 
Bribing Drunken Jake to Disturb the Meeting — An Unexpected Result — 
A Happy Day — Personal Experience in Vermont — Another Tough 
Audience — Willing Hands and Hearts — My Proposition to Twenty-seven 
Ladies — " Hark ! There Is the Bell ! " — Remarkable Scenes — Interest- 
ing Reminiscences — My Experience in Cincinnati — P. T. Barnum and 
Jenny Lind — Mr. Barnum Offers Five Thousand Dollars for the Use of a 
Church — Why His Offer Was Declined — " Look ! The Prairie Is on 
Fire!"— Faith in God 496 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE GREAT CONFLICT IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND — THE 
DESTROYER'S MARCH — PERSONAL WORK AND EXPERIENCES. 

The Temperance Cause in England — Mr. Spurgeon's Opinion — Alarming 
Increase of Dram-shops — London — Different Classes of Society — Grave 
Apprehensions for the Future — The Tide of Evil — Drinking Among 
Women — Fighting the Demon of Intemperance — My Labors in Eng- 
land — The Hardest Work of Thirty Years — Powerful Champions — 
Hoxton Hall — Its Former Yile Reputation — Touching Scenes — Imi- 
tating Jerry McAuley's Mission — Work Among the Ragged and 
Wretched — Rational Enjoyment for the Homeless — Edinburgh — A 
Total Abstinence Club-room — A Drunken Teetotaller — Seeking Safety — 
Testimony of Eminent Physicians — A Remarkable Incident — Recollec- 
tions of the Past — A Leaf from My Own Experience — An Awful 
Struggle — Rev. C. H. Spurgeon — How I Became Acquainted with 
Him — Mrs. Spurgeon — A Noble Woman — Disobeying the Doctor — 
Mr. Spurgeon's Substitute for Beer 578 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

POWER OF WOMAN'S INFLUENCE — SOCIAL CUSTOMS THAT 
LEAD TO RUIN — MEMORABLE INCIDENTS IN MY CAREER. 

Woman's Power and Influence — A True Incident — How Joe Was Induced 
to Sign the Pledge — One Year Afterwards — A Romantic Story — An 
Intemperate Lover — A Romance from Real Life — A Telling Crusade 
Against a Dram-shop — A Well-Planned Campaign — An Astonished 
Rumseller — " Worse Than it Was Yesterday " — Deciding Who Was the 
Head of the House — A Memorable Incident in My Career — Twenty 
Years After — Young Girls Who Drink— The Downward Path — A 
Lover Tempted by His Affianced — The Shaft of Ridicule — The Fall — 
Tempter and Tempted — Found Dead — Social Customs That Lead to 
Ruin — Unwelcome Guests — Incidents of My Work in Cincinnati — A 



xxvi CONTEXTS. 

Shower of One Hundred and Forty-three Autograph Albums — Writing 
the Pledge in Each One — What Followed — A Flood of Eight Hun- 
dred Albums — Story of the Colored Preacher — Jumping Through a 
Wall 528 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

RANDOM THOUGHTS — STORIES AND SKETCHES FROM BOTH 
SIDES OF LIFE — GLEANINGS OF A LEISURE HOUR. 

Religion in Everyday Life — Silent Influence — The Sentry of Pompeii — 
Faithful Unto Death — Origin of the Term "Teetotal" —Dickey 
Turner — Death Before Bondage — Trading in Human Lives — The 
Auction-block — A Strong Man's Agony — Clinging to Respectability — 
The Traveller and His Gold — Seeking Shelter — The Pioneer's Hut — 
An Hour of Fear and Trembling — " It 's Time to Go to Bed " — A Re- 
markable Incident — Anecdote of a Poor Negro — "Come, Cato, Get 
Up" — A Thrilling Incident — A Disabled Steamer — Drifting Toward 
the Shore — Power of Christian Example — A Ship in Distress — The 
Alarm Gun — Launching the Lifeboat — "I Will Go ; Who Will Follow 
Me " — Pulling for Life — Saved at Last — The Moderate Drinker — The 
Negro and His Potato Patch — A Disastrous Invasion — Old Tom's 
Pigs — " Pay De Damage " — " Daddy Moses " — Imparting Strength to 
Others 548 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

MODERATION— THE CUP OF DEATH — THE HUMOROUS SIDE 
OF DRUNKENNESS — THE DARK SIDE. 

A Minister's Dangerous Advice — Men Who "Can't Stand It" — Story of 
the Church Member Who Went After a Load of Wood — Taking a " Nip " 
to Keep Out the Cold — Another "Nip" — A Ludicrous Tableau — 
Listening to an Account of a Surgical Operation — I Am Compelled 
to Leave the Room — An Actor's Foolish Wish — " Cuttings-up " — 
A Story for the Benefit of Young Women — An Unwilling Bride- 
groom — The Humorous Side of Drunkenness — Ludicrous Incidents 

— "Toodles" — "That's the Way I Always Come Down Stairs" 

— Anecdote of Bishop Clarke — The Man Who Swallowed the Spool 
of Silk— "Wife! Wife! I'm All Unravelling "— A Good Story — 
An Exceedingly Comical Situation — The Dark Side — A Bridegroom 
Sentenced to be Hanged — What Rum Did 562 



CONTENTS. xxvii 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE REASON WHY — THE FIRST GLASS — RECOLLECTIONS OF 
MY FATHER — HUMOROUS STORIES. 

Standpoint — Opposition We Meet — An Obliging Blacksmith — My 
Respect for Other People's Opinions — Power of Truth — What Makes 
Public Sentiment — Our Duty— A Funny Story as Told by Bishop 
Clark — A Disputed Question in Astronomy — A Laughable Incident — 
An Unnatural Appetite — The Struggle of a Lifetime — Why I Am 
Polite to Dogs — Giving the Curs a Wide Berth — My Dread of Hydro- 
phobia — What Rev. E. H. Chapin Said — Terrible Results of the First 
Glass — A Graphic Picture — Recollections of My Father — His Habit of 
Moderate Drinking — His Death at Ninety-four — Advice to Moderate 
Drinkers — An Infamous Example — The Man at the Top of the Church 
Spire — A Dangerous Position — "O Sandy, I'm having an Awfu' 
Tumble " — Talking to a Plug of Tobacco — A Physician's Story — An 
Inveterate Smoker — Smoked to Death 582 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

AGENTS OF THE DEVIL — HOW LIQUOR-SELLERS MAKE 
PAUPERS, FEED JAILS, AND INCITE CRIME. 

A Truthful Sign-board — Specimens of the Rumseller's Work — A Remi- 
niscence of Other Days — A Pitiable Spectacle — Placing a Drunkard on 
Exhibition at a Fair — Fruit of the Dram-Shop — Protecting the Rum- 
seller — Fearful Responsibility — Remarkable Offer of P. T. Barnum — 
Stubborn Facts — Startling Figures — Sad Results — Haunts of Yice — 
Where Criminals and Paupers Come From — Hot-beds of Crime — A Sug- 
gestive Incident — Empty Jails — Terrible Scenes — Newgate Prison — 
A Pocket With a Hole in It — An Incident of London Life — Sunday 
Scene at the Seven Dials — Watching the Door of "The Grapes" — A 
Wretched Crowd — Disgraceful Scenes — A Terrible Threat Against My 
Life — Amusing Incident — Recalling My Dark Days — A Faithful Wife — 
"John, Don't be Soft " — Incident of the Great Coal Strike — How to 
Blot Out the Curse 597 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

ANNIHILATION OUR WAR CRY — FRUIT OF THE DRAM-SHOP - 
BRUTES IN HUMAN FORM — THE DAWN OF DAY. 

My First Yiew of Niagara Falls — " Back !»Back for your Lives " — Receiv- 
ing His Just Deserts — Moral Suasion — A Poor Woman's Story — a 
Brute in Human Form — A Mother's Plea — "For God's Sake Spare 



XXV111 



CONTEXTS. 



My Child ! " — The Lowest of the Low — Your Money and Your Life — 
A Mother's Grief — A Tour of Observation after Dark — What I Saw 
— Dreadful Scenes in a Whiskey Shop — Pettyfogging Shysters — Blood- 
money — Trial by Jury — " Did You Smell It ? " — The Patient Old Man 
and His Hay — A Young Man's Story — A Thrilling Incident — Carrying 
Home the Dead Body of His Father — Temperance Bitters — The Jury 
and the Stolen Bacon — A Foregone Conclusion — A Corrupt Judge — 
Retributive Justice — "A Bit of Bread, Please, for I'm Hungry" — Pull- 
ing a Tooth by Degrees — An Astonished Partner — Steps in the Right 
Direction 617 




SOUTH VIEW OF ME. GOUGH'S EESIDENCE. 



1. x S 




BYEEViiYAMK A lBBOT^^ 



r*\ 




HE story of the life and work 
of John B. Gongh is the story 
of the progress of the tem- 
perance reformation for over 
forty years. I propose in 
these pages to give the essen- 
tial facts in the history of that 
reformation, a movement 



as 



influential in its bearing on the welfare 
of the human race as any in the long 
campaign between light and darkness, 
good and evil ; the essential facts, too, 
in the story of that life, a life dramatic 
in its experiences, and striking in its contrasts of sunlight 
and shadow, more so than is often to be seen on life's stage, 
whose tragedy and comedy tread so closely on each other's 
heels. 



* It is proper to state here, to guard against any possible misapprehen- 
sion, that I was requested by the publishers to prepare this introduction ; 
that I had no consultation with Mr. Gough respecting its character or con- 
tents, and derived no information from him in its preparation, though, dur- 
ing his absence from home, I had access in his library to his records and 
scrap-books ; that all the matters herein described are matters of public rec- 
ord, chiefly, however, scattered through newspapers and periodical publica- 
tions during the past forty years ; that while some parts of the history here 
told have never been connectedly told before, the authority for it has all been 
before the public, and is matter of public record. 

29 



30 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

Prior to the seventeenth century drunkenness did not 
differ essentially, as a vice, from gluttony. One was excess 
in drinking ; the other was excess in eating. It is true that 
alcohol intoxicates; and that alcohol, in distinctly appre- 
ciable quantities, exists in all fermented juice of the fruits of 
the earth. But it is also true that intoxication produced by 
fermented liquors is a distinctly different phenomenon from 
intoxication produced by distilled liquors. Drunkenness, in 
the worst of Roman debauches, did not produce the madden- 
ing influences produced in our own time by strong drink. 
Drunkenness, as a vice, has existed ever since the days when 
the sons of Noah endeavored to hide the shame of their 
father's nakedness. But the epoch of drunkenness as an 
epidemic dates from the close of the seventeenth century. 
It was in that century that the dangerous and deadly art of 
distillation came into use. By this process the alcohol is 
separated from the product in which nature has evolved it. 
It can be easily converted into an attractive if not a pala- 
table drink. This strong drink is a dangerous and even a 
deadly poison. Used at first as a specific for the plague, it 
speedily came into general use as a medicine, then as a stimu- 
lant and beverage. The downward history of many an indi- 
vidual repeats the downward history of the European races, 
especially in the North. Lecky, in his history of the eigh- 
teenth century, gives a fearful picture of the extent to which 
the habit of drinking and the vice of drunkenness had taken 
hold of all classes of society in England. The medicine 
originally prescribed for the plague had proved worse than 
the disease. Hard drinking had become a national habit. It 
pervaded all classes from the highest to the lowest. Addison, 
the foremost moralist of his time, was not free from it. Ox- 
ford, whose private character was in most respects singularly 
high, is said to have frequently come intoxicated into the 
very presence of the Queen. Bolingbroke, when in office, 
sat up whole nights drinking, and in the morning, having 
bound a wet napkin around his forehead and his eyes, to 
drive away the effects of his intemperance, hastened without 
sleep to his official business. When Walpole was a young 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

man his father was accustomed to pour into his glass a 
double portion of wine, saying, " Come, Robert, you shall 
drink twice while I drink once ; for I will not permit the 
son, in his sober senses, to be witness to the intoxication 
of his father." The fashion set by the high was quickly 
followed by the low. In half a century the quantity of 
distilled liquors sold rose from 527,000 to over 5,000,000 
gallons. " Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out 
painted boards announcing that their customers could be 
made drunk for a penny, and dead drunk for twopence, and 
should have straw for nothing ; and cellars strewn with straw 
were accordingly provided, into which those who had become 
insensible were dragged, and where they remained till they 
had sufficiently recovered to renew their orgies." A law 
imposing a heavy tax on the sale of liquor was resisted by 
violent riots and evaded by clandestine sales. The drinking 
habits imported originally from Holland into England were 
imported thence, or directly from its birth-place, to this coun- 
try. Drinking was universal ; drunkenness was no crime, 
hardly a social vice. In New England all the stores kept 
New England rum, and it was the custom to give a drink to 
any trader who drove a considerable trade. Strong drink 
was universally provided, not only at all entertainments, but 
on all special occasions — house-warmings, hay-makings, and 
the like. Both in England and America drunkenness was 
regarded as an amiable weakness, or a good joke ; the current 
opinion respecting it is faithfully represented in Charles 
Dickens's "Pickwick Papers," published in 1835-36, and 
read in all circles of society without a protest. The church 
did little to rebuke the drunkenness, and did much to en- 
courage the drinking customs of society. At ordinations 
and dedications it was not unusual for the church to provide 
for its guests, out of the church treasury, not only wines 
and beer, but whiskey, gin, and rum. It was as customary for 
the host on such occasions then to provide alcoholic drinks, 
as it would be now for him to provide tea and coffee. Dr. 
Lyman Beecher thus describes the scene, evidently not an 
unusual one : — 



32 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

"■At the ordination at Plymouth, the preparation for our creature com- 
forts, in the sitting-room of Mr. Heart's house, besides food, was a broad 
sideboard covered with decanters, and bottles, and sugar, and pitchers of 
water. There we found all the various kinds of liquors then in vogue. The 
drinking was apparently universal. This preparation was made by the Society 
as a matter of course. When the Consociation arrived, they always took 
something to drink round; also before public services, and always on their 
return. As they could not all drink at once, they were obliged to stand and 
wait as people do when they go to mill. 

" There was a decanter of spirits also on the dinner-table, to help diges- 
tion, and gentlemen partook of it through the afternoon and evening as they 
felt the need, some more, some less; and the sideboard, with the spilling of 
water, and sugar, and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar of a very active 
grog-shop. None of the Consociation were drunk; but that there was not, at 
times, a considerable amount of exhilaration, I cannot affirm." * 

From a very early period isolated attempts were made to 
regulate or to restrain these drinking habits. In 1676 a new 
constitution of Virginia contained a clause prohibiting the 
sale of wines and ardent spirits. In 1777 Congress passed a 
resolution recommending the several legislatures to " pass 
laws the most effective for putting an immediate stop to the 
pernicious practice of distilling grain." In 1789 a tem- 
perance society was formed in Litchfield, Conn., to discuss 
the use of spirituous liquors. Resolutions of total absti- 
nence were passed a few years later by the Quarterly Metho- 
dist Episcopal Conference of Virginia and the Presbyterian 
Synod of Pennsylvania. But these spasmodic and local 
movements accomplished only temporary and local results. 
At the close of the first quarter of the present century, 
though there were some temperance reformers, there was no 
movement in either England or the United States sufficiently 
general to be worthy of being called a temperance reforma- 
tion. Such a movement never has a single source. Like a 
mighty river, it rises from half a score of springs, and is 
augmented in its flow by many more. One of the springs of 
the temperance movement in this country was furnished by 
Dr. Lyman Beecher's famous Six Sermons on Intemperance, 



* Lyman Beecher's autobiography, vol. i. chap, xxxvii. Compare " History 
of the Temperance Movement," by Rev. J. B. Dunn, D.D., in the " Centennial 
Temperance Volume," pp. 428, 429. 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

in 1825. The impulse was furnished by a sad but not un- 
common case ; the father and husband of a Christian woman 
in a neighborhood where he preached became victims of the 
drink. The sermons were preached in his country parish at 
Litchfield, Conn. But the intense excitement which they 
aroused was not confined to the neighborhood. They were 
printed. Other ministers took up the theme. The con- 
science of New England was fired. Whiskey and rum were 
banished, first from the sideboard on ordination occasions, 
then from the minister's tables altogether. In fifteen years 
nineteen twentieths of the clergy of New England were 
habitual if not total abstainers. The ministers of New 
England were at that time the leaders of society. Total 
abstinence became socially respected. Drunkenness became 
recognized as a vice. Wine, beer, ale, and cider still re- 
mained common table drinks ; but New England rum and 
Irish whiskey gradually disappeared, first from the side- 
board, then from the table, little by little from the closet. 
In ten years the consumption of strong drink had been 
decreased more than one half per capita. The population 
had increased forty per cent; the amount of strong drink 
consumed had decreased forty per cent. The temperance 
movement had begun ; — where the great reforms have gen- 
erally begun, in the church of Christ. 

Life is never spontaneous. That axiom is as true in 
morals as in physics. The life that seems to spring uncaused 
in flower from the soil, or in animalculse in the water, has 
been brought to its birth by wing or wind. The air is full of 
the seeds of life ; they drop unseen, germinate, grow. The 
Washingtonian movement did not spring, spontaneous, from 
a tavern. Temperance sentiment was in the air ; Christian 
society was full of it ; the seed was carried by some invisible 
minister of grace and goodness and dropped in the un- 
promising soil. The growth was marvellous, miraculous. A 
drinking club was wont to meet at Chase's tavern in the city 
of Baltimore. They appointed, probably in jest, two of the 
number to go and hear a temperance lecturer — Rev. Matthew 
Hale Smith — in one of the churches, and return and report. 



34 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

On this report a hot debate ensued. It waxed hotter and 
hotter. The interference of the landlord added fuel to the 
flames. Six of the club formed on the spot a total absti- 
nence society. They gave it the name of the Washingtonian 
Total Abstinence Society. We cannot learn that there was 
any special reason for the adoption of the name Washing- 
tonian. Washington was a good name, and lent a certain 
respectability to the organization. The date was April, 
1840. A drinking tavern was a strange manger for such a 
child to be cradled in; but life is full of such dramatic 
episodes. The six separated, agreeing to meet the next night 
in a carpenter's shop ; each member pledged himself to bring 
another member. Then began the actual realization of 
Edward Everett Hale's dream of " Ten Times One is Ten." 
If the upper classes had felt the disgrace, the lower classes 
had felt the bondage of the drink. The drinkers became 
apostles of emancipation. Washingtonian societies were 
multiplied. Early the movement was joined by a re- 
formed drunkard by the name of John H. W. Hawkins. 
For eighteen years he carried on an itinerant ministry of 
reform, speaking to mixed audiences, but largely, if not 
chiefly, to drinkers, temperate or intemperate. Other and 
less notable apostles of the temperance movement sprang up 
to follow in his footsteps and imitate his example. Temper- 
ance newspapers were organized; most of them have proved 
ephemeral publications ; but they served their purpose while 
they lived ; not always wisely, as we shall see, not always 
unselfishly ; but when was ever any great movement for a 
reformation of the world, from the days of the Apostles down, 
free from folly and from selfishness ? Washingtonian socie- 
ties have now gone out of existence. If one exists it must 
be rather as an anachronistic curiosity than as a living force. 
The Washingtonian methods are no longer in vogue to any 
considerable extent among temperance workers. The era of 
universal pledge-taking has passed; it can hardly be expected 
to return. The custom of considering a drunken life and a 
resolution of reform sufficient guarantee of good conduct to 
put the as yet hardly steadied inebriate into cultured society, 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

not to learn but to teach, on the platform and even in the 
pulpit, can only be defended on the ground that a desperate 
disease justifies desperate remedies. The fatal weakness of 
the Washingtonian movement was its false assumption that 
every one who wishes to break off his drinking habits can do 
so. It ignored the fact, attested by experience and con- 
firmed both by pathology and moral science, that one of the 
worst effects of the drink is an enervation and destruction of 
the will power. It was a call to men swept by on the 
current to swim for their lives, and it counted every man 
saved who attempted to swim. It measured its work by the 
number of the pledges it administered. It proclaimed Boston 
reformed because " four fifths of all the Boston drunkards 
had signed the pledge." Born in a tavern, and apostled by 
reformed drunkards, it possessed, as a movement, neither the 
wisdom of philosophy nor the steadiness of religion. But it 
possessed, what was for that epoch a more valuable quality 
than either wisdom or steadiness, enthusiasm. It was dead 
in earnest. Its earnestness was that of newly emancipated 
men who had known in their own experience the horrors of 
the drink bondage. It furnished not instruction, but arous- 
ing; and arousing was what the community then needed. 
It was a crying in the night of Fire ! Fire ! Wisdom and 
religion, who had been busy with other problems, heard the 
cry, woke up to the awful conflagration, and set themselves 
to work — quite too calmly and leisurely — to devise means 
to put out the flames; or, quite as likely, to criticise the 
means which others, more alive to the present danger, were 
employing. It is not for us now to go back to the methods 
of the Washingtonians ; but we owe an incalculable debt of 
gratitude to them for sounding the alarm. 

If the Washingtonian movement had done the world no 
other service, the world would owe it a large debt for giving 
us John B. Gough. 

John B. Gough was born Aug. 22, 1817, at Sandgate in 
the county of Kent, England. His mother was a woman of 
tenderness and piety. His father was a discharged soldier on 
a pension ; a man of unbending integrity, but of severity 

3 



36 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

of character, whose virtues were those of a "good soldier," 
wrought in a school of stern discipline. The family was in 
straitened circumstances ; an English village in that day 
afforded much less facility than it does to-day for education to 
a boy so circumstanced, and the young lad's education was 
of the simplest description. But he evidently took full 
advantage of such facilities as were given him. He became 
somewhat noted as a reader j he gives in his autobiography a 
pathetic story of the succor brought to a weary mother and 
an empty cupboard by his earning, or at least winning, five 
shillings and sixpence, nearly equal to a dollar and a half of 
our money, and equivalent to a great deal more, a gift to him 
by a gentleman who was pleased at his proficiency. Mimicry 
was a favorite diversion with him, and there must have been 
some native talent, for it diverted older friends as well as 
playmates of his own age. He practised writing to good 
purpose, too ; there lies before me now a book containing 
his arithmetical exercises, done before he had reached his 
teens ; the pages are beautiful specimens of penmanship, and 
are almost literally without a blot or an erasure. At twelve 
years of age he was apprenticed to a neighboring family 
about emigrating to America, who undertook to take him 
with them, teach him a trade, and provide for him till he was 
twenty-one. The issue was just what it usually is in such 
cases. The family taught him nothing; for two years he 
had no opportunity to go to either day school or Sunday 
school ; he grew discontented ; and in 1831 left the family, 
who had a farm in Oneida County, N. Y., and came to New 
York city to make or mar his own fortunes. He was in his 
fifteenth year. Two years later his mother and sister joined 
him. The story of their want and suffering it is needless for 
our purpose here to narrate. Mr. Gough has told it with 
terrible simplicity in his autobiography. It is a photograph 
of many a life ; a tragic illustration of the declaration, " The 
poor ye have always with you." The mother died, and was 
buried in the Potter's Field, without even a shroud or a 
burial service. The young man grew bitter and reckless. 
He alternated between his bookbinder's trade and ivreguUr 



INTKODUCTION. 37 

employment in other directions. He spent a good share of 
his earnings in drink. At this time his dramatic talent 
opened a dangerous way for him upon the stage. He was a 
singer as well as an elocutionist ; perhaps might have won 
a professional success ; but he never gave himself to the 
stage with any settled purpose. An old programme of a 
concert in which he was evidently the " star," affords a fair 
illustration of his professional position. I venture to copy a 
part of it : — 

CONCERT AT AMESBUBY. 

Mr. M. G. Stanwood and Mr. C. Warren respectfully inform the ladies 
and gentlemen of Amesbury, that they will give a concert at Franklin Hall, 
this evening, March 22, for the purpose of introducing the Accordion into use, 
as it is thought by many to be an instrument that cannot be performed on. 
The performance will consist of some of the most popular music from the 
latest operas. 

Mb. John B. Gough, 

the celebrated singer from the New York and Boston theatres, will also 
appear in his most popular songs. 

The programme included five songs and three recitations 
by Mr. Gough. The tickets were twenty-five cents. 

He married ; his sister had already married and was living 
in Providence — still her home. But marriage did nothing 
to mend either his ways or his fortunes ; drink had become 
an uncontrollable passion ; his wife and infant child died ; and 
he drank more deeply to drown his grief. When he had no 
money he earned his drink by telling facetious stories and 
singing comic songs to the crowd in the bar-room. More 
than once he meditated suicide ; once almost accomplished 
it, but dashed the laudanum from his lips and lived on. He 
had one attack of delirium tremens. He had reached the 
bottom of the descending grade ; he was without friends, or 
home, or hope. 

We shall not attempt to tell here the story of how he was 
rescued from this death in life by love. It is a familiar story, 
which Mr. Gough has often told. A stranger arrests him on 
the street by a touch and a word of kindness ; an invitation 
to sign the pledge arouses a despairing resolution ; he re- 
solves and signs ; he knows not when it is done whether to 



38 PLATFOKM ECHOES. 

be glad or sorry ; a second friend calls on him at his bench, 
bringing words of cheer and hope ; he battles with his 
appetite, a frightful battle but a victorious one ; the tem- 
perance meetings take the place of the bar-room and the 
theatre ; temperance friends take the place of the old 
cronies; in their respect he finds his own self-respect; he 
begins his new life. 

That he should have been at once invited to speak on 
temperance platforms was as natural then as it would be 
under similar circumstances unnatural now. The temper- 
ance meetings in those days were experience meetings. 
They were held in district school-houses, court-houses, or 
public halls. The churches were occasionally, but by no 
means very commonly, opened to them. 

Mr. Gough gives a humorous picture of one of his first 
experiences as a public speaker in a district school-house. 
He had not respectable clothes and was compelled to hide 
them beneath an old overcoat snugly buttoned up to the 
chin. The platform was close to a well-heated stove. The 
heat of the room, the active exertion of the speaker, and the 
warmth of the overcoat threatened to. dissolve him. Tern- 
perate habits and a little money from friends or from school- 
house lectures enabled him before long to buy better 
apparel. Invitations to speak began to flow in upon him. 
He obtained leave of absence from his employers for a 
week or two, leaving a pile of unbound Bibles on his bench 
to be completed on his return. He never after returned to 
his bookbinder's bench. Audiences increased; reputation 
increased. Wherever he went he made friends. Society 
opened its doors to him. Among his earliest auditors was a 
Miss Mary Whitcomb, daughter of a New England farmer, 
who had left home at eighteen and was alternately teaching 
and attending school when she met the young orator. She 
was charmed with him ; he with her ; on the 24th of- Novem- 
ber, 1843, they were married. She brought him those stay- 
ing and steadying qualities — that strength of decision and 
that practical wisdom — which the impulsive, ardent, sensi- 
tive orator needed. She added tenacity to his earnestness 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

What the world owes to Mr. Gough it partly knows; 
what it owes through him to Mrs.. Gough it does not suspect. 
With marriage the old life faded gradually away ; the new 
life dawned rapidly. Friends gathered about him; some 
merely to flatter ; some really to love. Among the fastest and 
best of these friends was Deacon Moses Grant, of Dr. Lath- 
rop's (Unitarian) church of Boston, who became an adviser 
and friendly manager for the young lecturer. He travelled 
through New England, visited New York, Philadelphia, 
Washington, Richmond. His popularity as an orator in- 
creased ; his fame widened. The story of the ovations given 
to him and the oratorical triumphs won by him it is no part 
of our purpose here to relate. These are the ephemeral facts 
in a noble and useful life; we are here concerned only with 
the work done and with the principles which underlie it. 

Mr. Gough's popularity was partly a result of his prin- 
ciples. He introduced a new spirit and gradually new 
methods into the temperance reformation. He took no part 
in the not uncommon criticism of the churches. He early 
became a member of the Mount Vernon Church of Boston 
— the Rev. Dr. Edward N. Kirk's. He gradually lifted the 
temperance movement from a mere moral reform movement 
to a religious plane. He spoke in the vernacular of the com- 
mon people ; but he did not shock the sensibilities of his 
audiences by vulgarities or their charity by denunciations. 
The churches opened their doors to him. In New York city 
he spoke in fourteen different churches, representing several 
different denominations. At Yale and Princeton he was 
warmly welcomed by the students ; in the latter college he 
was elected a member of one of the literary societies. His 
youth — he was about twenty-seven — his small stature, thin 
melancholy face, and bright eyes — which could and still can 
flash fire under excitement — won for him attention before he 
began to speak. His fluent language, his dramatic action, 
his intense and impassioned earnestness, his suppressed feel- 
ing, and the lightning-like rapidity with which he changed 
the moods of the audience with his own' from the humorous 
to the pathetic, took all audiences by storm. We draw this 



40 PLATFOEM ECHOES. 

picture wholly from contemporaneous newspapers, and give 
it almost in the words of the newspapers which describe him. 
His career from 1842 onward has been one of steadily 
increasing oratorical fame and popularity. 

But his life was by no means merely an ovation. It was 
yet more a battle. He had enemies without arid worse 
enemies within. Once he broke his pledge. It was about 
five months after he had taken it. A physician prescribed 
medicine for him for an old illness. It contained ether and 
alcohol. It awoke the old appetite and he yielded to it. 
The lapse was not a serious one ; except as every lapse is 
serious. He re-signed the pledge, yielded to the counsels of 
his friends, and resumed his work. Two years and a half 
later he suffered a more terrible experience, which has been 
fully related in his autobiography. A stranger claimed 
acquaintance with Mr. Gough and invited him to take a 
glass of soda-water with him. The invitation was accepted. 
The soda-water was drugged, and Mr. Gough, in the state of 
semi-unconsciousness which resulted, was spirited away and 
kept from his friends and the public for several days. When 
at last found by his friends he was still suffering from the 
effects of the drug. The physician who was called to attend 
him pronounced the evidences of poisoning unmistakable. 
The facts were fully investigated by the church of which he 
was a member, and it was unanimously voted that they called 
for no church censure. The reputable press, at the time, 
almost without exception, expressed the same judgment. 
He had been drugged and abducted for a triple purpose, — 
partly robbery, partly blackmail, partly his overthrow as a 
temperance lecturer. The robbery was effected; the other 
two objects were not. 

This attempt to ruin Mr. Gough was somewhat more bold 
than any other which the drink traffic has ever made ; but it 
is by no means the only one. Traps were laid for him 
again and again. Generally he was wise enough to see 
them, or his friends were wise enough to forewarn him. 
His wife's practical sagacity saved him more than once. 
On one occasion a bottle of liquor was sent to his room at a 



INTRODUCTION. 41 

hotel by a hotel clerk. Fortunately, he was in, followed the 
waiter down stairs, denounced the clerk to his face, and 
received an apology. Once in a hotel office he heard a toper 
declare that Mr. Gough had drank with him ; he walked up 
to him, told him he lied, and compelled him to retract then 
and there. Once, early in his lecture experience, a restaurant 
keeper of Newburyport, — a church member, — circulated 
the report that Mr. Gough had come into his restaurant and 
called for and drank a glass of strong beer. Mr. Gough's 
friends got wind of the story, got authority from Mr. Gough, 
went to the pious seller of beer, threatened him with prose- 
cution, and extorted from him in writing a most abject 
retraction. Of course a hundred such stories have been 
circulated to one that has been retracted. We shall meet 
with more of this sort of business, and worse, by-and-by. 

Opposition from the liquor-sellers was by no means, how- 
ever, the only opposition which Mr. Gough had to encounter. 
That furnished by jealous competitors in the temperance work 
was almost as bitter and much harder to bear. Men of some 
local celebrity were envious of his growing fame. They ac- 
cused him of mercenary motives. The average temperance 
lecturer received in those days for a lecture $2 or $3; 
sometimes as much as $5. Mr. Gough's account-book shows 
on page after page in those earlier years his lecture fees 
as $5, |7, and $8. When it rose to $10 competing lec- 
turers began to remonstrate. One Washingtonian journal 
undertook to fix the maximum rate for such lectures for all 
time to come. "Anything over five dollars," said this poli- 
tical economist, "is too much, and only tempts unprincipled 
and selfish men to advocate temperance for the sake of the 
money." For some time Mr. Gough's fees remained at $10 
and travelling expenses. The largest halls were filled at 
25 cents a head. Hall rent, fuel, and gas were not large 
items ; the profits that somebody made can be easily es- 
timated. These profits went nominally, and generally 
really, into the treasury of some temperance society, for Mr. 
Gough's lectures were uniformly at first under the auspices 
and for the benefit of local Washingtonian societies. But 



42 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

there grew up a reasonable suspicion that it did not always 
all get into the treasury. Some of Mr. Gough's friends 
thought, after he had lectured night after night in New 
York city for $10 a night, paying his own hotel-bills, that 
he was not getting his share. They hired a hall, announced 
a " benefit " night, stood at the door themselves, took the 
money, paid all the expenses, and handed him over the sur- 
plus. It was over $600. When the amount was known it 
did not allay the jealousy which Mr. Gough's popularity had 
aroused. This jealousy was intensified by his kindly but 
frank criticism of the Washingtonian methods. Washingto- 
nianism was not a religious movement ; it made but small 
account of God, Bible, or immortality. The meetings were not 
often opened with prayer ; they were often marred by criticisms 
on the churches and the clergy, which would better have 
been omitted. Some of its most active workers were Chris- 
tian men ; others were infidels. Mr. Gough gradually passed 
out of the hands of the infidels into the hands of the Chris- 
tians ; out of the school-houses into the churches. Attacked 
for this, he replied with commendable candor that temper- 
ance was only one virtue, and that no virtue can grow when 
solitary. Virtues grow in clumps ; they are gregarious. The 
only final remedy for intemperance is manhood, with all 
which manhood involves and implies. He told them frankly 
the truth. "In New England there is a class of men who 
are a curse to the cause. This may seem singular, but it is 
nevertheless true. They are anti-slavery men, anti-hanging 
men, moral reform men ; but, because the ministers of the 
Gospel do not think these reforms paramount to the Gospel 
of Christ, they withdraw from the church and style them- 
selves ' Come-outers.' " Any one familiar with the history 
of New England from 1840 to 1860 will recognize the truth 
of this portraiture, but the men who were photographed took 
umbrage at it. They retorted by charging him with being a 
sectarian ; with using the temperance platform to promote 
an orthodox propagandism. They said that he declared that 
the end of the drink was eternal death. They proved his 
sectarian spirit by citing the fact that orthodox people ap- 



INTRODUCTION. 43 

proved his course and nocked to hear him. One journal 
cited in triumphal demonstration a paragraph from the New- 
York " Evangelist," saying that " Mr. Gough intimately con- 
nects the temperance reformation with man's ETERNAL 
interests, and wherever he goes greatly commends himself to 
the religious community" The unsectarian editor put Eternal 
in capitals and the religious community in italics, as we have 
done, to emphasize the enormity of Mr. Gough's offence. 
Another equally zealous advocate of unsectarian temperance 
harangued him on the iniquity of going about accompanied 
by such an orthodox backer as Deacon Grant ; it was rather 
perplexed to defend its criticism when it discovered that Mr. 
Grant was a Unitarian. The criticisms made on Mr. Gough 
by professedly temperance journals were by no means merely 
criticisms on his methods. They were assaults on his good 
name. One libellous pamphlet, gotten out in the evident 
interest of the liquor traffic, was publicly sold at the doors 
of a prominent Washingtonian hall. When the Washingto- 
nians were taxed with it, they replied that it was not sold by 
the Society. When the scandal was circulated in New York, 
at least one journal damned him with a faint defence, and an- 
other advised him to abandon the lecture-field and return to 
his bench. It is not pleasant to recall these experiences. But 
history has nothing to do with the pleasant or the unpleas- 
ant. It has only to tell the truth. It must not, however, be 
forgotten that this is only a part of the truth. In spite of 
blackmailers, and backbiters, and secret slanderers, and open 
abuse, Mr. Gough's fame steadily extended, his popularity 
steadily widened, and his friends increased in number and 
deepened in affection for him. 

Meantime the same causes which produced the temper- 
ance reformation in the United States had operated in Great 
Britain. In both countries the church gave to it its first 
impulse and its first success. In the United States this was 
given by the Protestant churches ; in Great Britain by the 
Roman Catholic church. Total abstinence, which was mat- 
ter of jibe and jest in Cork in 1836, had grown by 1845 to 
be almost as popular a cry as " Repeal." The fame of Father 



44 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

Matthew equalled, if it did not eclipse, the fame of O'Con- 
nell. The excitement wherever the eloquent Capuchin went 
was such as is only possible in an excitable Celtic race, and 
such as no moral question has ever aroused among them be- 
fore or since. In Ulster county, Orangemen greeted him 
with their Orange flags, and Roman Catholics accompanying 
him greeted the hated symbol of Protestantism with cheers. 
At Limerick the throng that came to greet him literally 
pushed a troop of dragoons into the river. By 1840 it is 
estimated that nearly 2,000,000 persons had signed his tem- 
perance pledge. The immediate results, according to the 
testimony of official reports, were seen in other and more 
important poinis than a mere roll-call of temperance soldiers. 
Trade increased ; crime diminished ; the churches were filled ; 
the jails were emptied. With an increasing population the 
committals for crime from 1839 to 1845, when the Father 
Matthew movement reached its height, diminished from 
12,000 to 7,000 ; capital sentences declined from 66 to 14, and 
penal convictions from 900 in 1839 to 500 in 1845. England 
felt the throb of excitement. Father Matthew was not only 
thronged by crowds, but feted by the " best society " during 
his visit to England in 1843. The picture, partly comic, 
partly pathetic, which Mrs. Carlyle has painted of herself 
climbing upon his platform in her enthusiasm to shake hands 
with the great orator, illustrates the sort of enthusiasm the 
man and his work aroused. The " moderation " societies 
went out of existence ; the total abstinence societies took 
their place. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland followed 
the lead of the Capuchin ; English clergymen followed a little 
later ; physicians followed the ministers ; and before 1850 a 
total abstinence declaration had been signed in England by 
over 800 ministers of different denominations, and a kindred 
declaration against the use of wine, beer, or spirits in a state 
of health had been given to the public, signed by 2,000 medi- 
cal practitioners of all grades, from the court physician to 
the village practitioner. 

Thus a very vital and aggressive temperance sentiment, 
had been already aroused in Great Britain, when, in the sum- 



INTRODUCTION. 45 

mer of 1853, Mr. Gough set sail for his native land. It was 
Lis first visit. He left it unfriended and alone in 1829 ; he 
returned to it twenty-five years later an orator with a reputa- 
tion which had been borne across the ocean, at a time when 
not only the Atlantic was a greater barrier than it is to-day, 
but American reputations were less esteemed in Great Brit- 
ain than they are to-day. He stood in need of rest. In the 
three or four months prior to his sail, he had lectured ninety- 
three times in ninety-one days. 

The early workers in the temperance reformation were 
enthusiasts. They believed in their principles, a faith which 
time has done nothing to weaken ; they had an ardent expec- 
tation that their principles would speedily convert the world, 
a hope which time' has done much to cool. Experience had 
not in, 1853 proved that every pledge-taker is not necessarily 
a permanent total abstainer. They counted their converts 
by their signatures — that is by the thousands. They 
thought the battle already almost won. In America the 
English have the reputation of being cold and phlegmatic. 
The reputation is a false one. An English audience is much 
more emotional and much more demonstrative than an Amer- 
ican audience. The temperance reformation in 1853 was 
chiefly confined to the middle classes. Since then bishops 
and noble lords have become both preachers and practisers 
of total abstinence. Sir Wilfred Lawson leads the political 
temperance movement in the House of Commons. One of 
the wealthiest noblemen in all England sets his tenantry a 
good example for abstinence from beer by his own abstinence 
from wine. More than one Oxford and Cambridge professor 
gives the movement a dignity in literary circles ; more than 
one high dignitary gives it character in the church. The 
clergy have organized The Church of England Temperance 
Society. This was all unknown in 1853. The temperance 
movement in 1853 in England might be justly characterized 
as Christianity was characterized by Paul in the first cen- 
tury ; not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, 
not many noble were called. It was essentially a middle- 
class movement. The enthusiasm was not always tempered 



46 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

with discretion nor guided by good taste. The coming of the 
orator from America had been heralded far and near. Exeter 
Hall, London, was hired for a grand demonstration. The 
galleries were covered with a cloth emblazoned with the 
legend " The London Temperance League." Two persons 
were stationed on either side of the platform to wave, one the 
American, the other the British flag, as Mr. Gough entered. 
An extraordinary ode was prepared for the occasion, printed, 
and distributed through the hall to be sung. A choir of five 
hundred vocalists had been gathered to sing it. The first 
stanza indicates the character at once of the audience and 
the enthusiasm. 

THE TEMPERANCE HERO. 

Am. — See the Conquering Hero Comes ! 

See, the Temperance Hero comes ! 
Sound the trumpets, heat the drums ! 
Rend the air, in rapture sing 
With heart and voice to welcome him ! 

Mr. Gough fortunately got a glimpse of the programme 
in the committee room. He protested against the perform- 
ance. There were enough sensible men on the platform to 
second the protest. The ode was not sung. But one can 
readily imagine the kind of ovation which greeted the " Con- 
quering Hero " when he entered the platform and faced the 
audience whose poet had given this interpretation to their 
enthusiasm. The hall was packed by an immense audience. 
In August no one is in town in London. But the audience 
was not only large, it was " respectable." This word, which 
the English reporters used to characterize the gathering, has 
a significance in England which no untravelled American can 
understand. " We were hardly prepared," said the " British 
Banner," "to see so noble a gathering at this season of the 
year. It was one which could have been collected by no 
other than this celebrated stranger." And the "British 
Banner " was thought by the temperance advocates to be an 
unfriendly, rather than a friendly critic. It could be defended 
as friendly only on the ground that " faithful are the wounds 
of a friend." An enthusiastic friendly audience is always 



INTRODUCTION. 47 

more difficult to master than a hostile one. Admiration is 
the orator's greatest enemy ; for to conquer his audience he 
must both forget himself and make them forget both him 
and themselves. The minds of his auditors must be emptied 
of all else in order that they may be filled with the theme ; 
and it is easier to empty them of personal prejudice than of 
personal enthusiasm. With the instincts of a true orator, 
which in this respect are those also of a modest gentleman, 
— for we cannot doubt that Quintillian is right in declaring 
that they are identical, — Mr. Gough perceived that the 
enthusiasm of such an audience could not be sustained. He 
must calm them before he could inspire them ; take them 
down before he could elevate them ; disappoint them in order 
not to disappoint them. He must destroy their enthusiasm 
for him in order that he might arouse their enthusiasm for 
his cause. He began, as is indeed his wont, in a conversa- 
tional tone of voice. He spoke without gesture and in 
sentences that were almost commonplace. His voice indi- 
cated none of its astonishing resources of power and pathos. 
He saw disappointment gathering in the faces of his audience. 
Men behind him whispered to one another " This will never 
do." But when he had thus gently let his audience down 
from the perilous height to which they had climbed, and from 
which they expected him to take them in still higher flights, 
he had achieved the orator's always most difficult and most 
perilous feat. The rest of his victory was easy. How com- 
plete that victory was is best indicated by an extract from 
the " British Banner " of the next day. The extract is long. 
But it affords an admirable pen and ink portrait of the great 
orator on one of the most trying occasions of his life. We 
therefore make no apology for reproducing it, and no attempt 
to condense it : — 

Mr. Gough is a well-adjusted mixture of the poet, orator, and dramatist — 
in fact, an English Gavazzi. Gough is, in all respects, in stature, in voice, 
and in force of manner on a scale considerably lower than the great Italian 
orator. Gavazzi is more grand, more tragic, more thoroughly Italian, but 
much less adapted to an English auditory. In their natural attributes, how- 
ever, they have much in common. If Gavazzi possesses more power, Gough 
has more pathos. This is the main difference, the chief distinction, and here 



48 PLATFOKM ECHOES. 

the difference is in favor of Gough. Gough excels Gavazzi in pathos far 
more than Gavazzi excels Gough in power. Then, Gough is more moderate 
in his theatrical displays. He paints much more, and acts much less ; while as 
to force and general effect, he is, of course, on high Vantage ground, speaking 
his native tongue and among his fellow-countrymen. He is in this respect in 
England what Gavazzi would be in Italy. Both find, and find to an equal 
extent, their account in their histrionic manner. The absence of unmitigated 
vehemence is highly favorable to the economy of strength, and a large 
measure of repose pervades the whole exhibition. Eesting himself, he gives 
rest to his audience, and hence both remain unwearied till the end. Mr. 
Gough gave no signs of fatigue last night. At the close of nearly an hour 
and forty minutes, he seemed quite as fresh as when he began, and quite 
capable of continuing till midnight, cock-crowing, or morning ! No heat 
-even was apparent to us ; perspiration was out of the question ; the hand- 
kerchief was never, that we observed, once in requisition throughout the 
whole of his surprising display. He resembled a clump of Highland heather, 
under the blaze of a burning sun — as dry as powder ! It is as natural to him to 
speak — and that on a scale to be heard by the largest auditory — as to breathe. 
It ceases now to be a matter of astonishment that he makes so little of stand- 
ing up to speak every night in succession, for weeks together, and travelling 
for that purpose one or more hundreds of miles by day ! There is an utter 
absence of all mental perturbation ; before he commences there seems no 
idea of his being about to do anything at all extraordinary, or, when he has 
finished, that anything extraordinary has been performed. It seems to be as 
much a matter of course as walking or running, sitting down or rising up. 
His self-command is perfect, and hence his control over an assembly is com- 
plete. Governing himself, he easily governs all around him. It was impos- 
sible for any man to have been more thoroughly at home than he was last 
night. Like a well-bred man, once on his feet, there was the absence alike 
of bashfulness and impudence. 

The address was entirely without order of any sort — nay, for this the 
assembly was prepared at the outset by the intimation that he had never 
written, and never premeditated a speech in his life ! Last night the address 
was a succession of pictures, delivered in a manner the most natural, and 
hence, at one time, feeling was in the ascendancy, and, at another, power. 
His gifts of mimicry seemed great ; this perilous, though valuable faculty, 
however, was but sparingly exercised. It is only as the lightning, in a single 
flash, illumining all and gone, making way for the rolling peal and the falling 
torrent. Throughout the whole of last night he addressed himself to the 
fancy and to the heart. We cannot doubt, however, that Mr. Gough is in a 
very high degree capable of dealing with principles and of grappling with an 
adversary by way of argument, but he adopted a different, and, as we think, 
a much wiser course for a first appearance. The mode of address is one of 
which mankind will never tire till human nature becomes divested of its in- 
herent properties. He recited a series of strikingly pertinent facts, all of 
which he set in beautiful pictures. Nothing could exceed the unity of the 
impression, while nothing could be more multifarious than the means 
employed to effect it. It was a species of mortar-firing, in which old nails, 
broken bottles, chips of iron, and bits of metal, together with balls of lead — 



INTRODUCTION. 49 

anything, everything partaking of the nature of a missile — was available. 
The compound mass was showered forth with resistless might and powerful 
execution. The great idea, which was uppermost all the evening, was the 
«vils of drinking ; and, under a deep conviction of that truth, every man 
must have left the assembly. 

The conclusion to which we have come, then, is that the merits of Mr. Gough 
have been by no means over-rated. In England he would take a stand quite 
as high as he has taken in the United States. There is no hazard now in say- 
ing that there will be no disappointment. He will nowhere fail to equal, if 
not to surpass, expectation ; and his triumph will, among Englishmen, be all 
the more complete from the utter absence of all pretension. His air makes 
promise of nothing ; and hence all that is given is so much above the contract. 
It is impossible to conceive of anything more entirely free from empiricism. 
From first to last, it is nature acting in one of her favorite sons. Oratorically 
considered, he is never at fault. While the vocable pronunciation, with 
scarcely an exception, is perfect, the elocutionary element is in every way 
worthy of it. He is wholly free, on the one hand, from heavy monotony, 
and, on the other, from ranting declamation, properly so-called. There is no 
mouthing — no stilted shouting. His whole speaking was eminently true ; 
there is nothing false either in tone or inflection ; and the same remark 
applies to emphasis. All is truth ; the result is undeviating pleasure and 
irresistible impression. His air is that of a man who never thought five 
minutes on the subject of public speaking; but who surrenders himself to the 
guidance of his genius, while he ofttimes snatches a grace beyond the reach 
of art. 

In Mr. Gough, however, there are far higher considerations than those of 
eloquence. We cannot close without adverting to the highest attribute of his 
speaking — it is pervaded by a spirit of religion. Not a word escapes him 
which is objectionable on that score. Other things being equal, this never 
fails to lift a speaker far above his fellows. In this respect, he is a pattern 
to temperance advocates. He did not, to be sure, preach Christianity ; 
that was not his business ; but the whole of his enchanting effusion was in 
harmony with its doctrines, always breathing its spirit, and occasionally pay- 
ing it a natural and graceful tribute. At the close, in particular, that was 
strongly marked. He there stated that the temperance cause was the off- 
spring of the Christian church, adding that whatever was such was in its own 
nature immortal, and thence predicting the ultimate triumph of the cause in 
which he was embarked. 

The oratorical victory at Exeter Hall was at once the 
prelude to, and the preparation for, a continuous victory 
throughout England and Scotland. We shall make no at- 
tempt to tell the story of the succession of ovations which 
extended from London to Edinburgh ; and from August, 1853, 
to August, 1855. We doubt whether modern history records 
any case of an oratorical triumph more continuous and more 
extraoidinary. Whitfield had the many-sided subject of 



50 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

religion ; Mr. Gough but the one theme of temperance. Mr. 
Beecher's famous English speeches during the civil war are 
unparalleled in the history of oratory; but these were but 
six, while Mr. Gough spoke almost continuously for two 
years. Most of his addresses were given under the auspices 
of the local temperance societies, and these generally made 
arrangements for the signing of the pledge at the close of 
every address. 

The pledge was of a simple and comprehensive character ; 
the signer promised to abstain from all intoxicating liquors, 
and to exert all his influence against drinking customs an(jt 
the drink traffic. How he should do this was left wholly to 
his own conscience. The epoch of open and violent opposi- 
tion had nearly passed. The only place, we believe, where Mr. 
Gough suffered any serious opposition was at Oxford ; and 
there the interruption, though serious enough to the speaker, 
was only " fun " to the boys. The speaker took it in such im- 
perturbable good humor that he was finally allowed to finish 
his address in peace. The religious prejudice which existed 
in the United States against the Washingtonian movement, 
because it was conducted by men out of sympathy with the 
churches, existed in England, and was perhaps intensified by 
Mr. Gough's trenchant criticisms on wine-drinking among 
the clergy. Whatever the cause, the fact is certain that in 
not a few localities the churches were refused to the societies 
which desired them for his addresses. In Edinburgh the 
largest church was first granted, and then under some mys- 
terious influence withdrawn. At Cupar all the churches, 
except the United Presbyterian, which was the least com- 
modious, were refused. The story was then circulated that 
the galleries of the church were not safe. At Stirling the 
largest church was granted, and then under legal proceedings 
brought by some pew-holder, the nature of which we do not 
pretend to understand, an interdict was issued and the 
church was closed. At Dunse the churches were all refused; 
the temperance people, not to be balked, erected a pavilion 
capable of holding an audience of three thousand persons. 
Mr. Gough spoke in it twice, both times to crowded au- 



INTRODUCTION. 51 

diences, though the entire population of the town is but two 
thousand six hundred. The pavilion was then taken down. 
We do not recall any other instance recorded in history in 
which a building was erected for two speeches from a single 
speaker. A greater opposition was that of a serene and cul- 
tured indifference or a complacent ridicule. Some one has 
said that all great movements pass through three stages 
before they can reach their final success : first, indifference, 
then ridicule, then argument, then comes victory. The tem- 
perance cause had passed into the second stage when Mr. 
Gough arrived in England. It had already got into " Punch." 
That journal, with a style of wit somewhat characteristic, 
expressed great alarm when it heard of the anticipated meet- 
ing at Exeter Hall, and called on the trustees to look to the 
drainage, lest damage should be done by "a combination of 
several thousand floods of tears with the orator's flood of 
eloquence." Arguments were sometimes attempted; but 
they were not better than the wit. " Why does he not attack 
the draper as well as the licensed victualler," cried the 
" Northern Examiner." " The love of dress ruins as many, 
perhaps, as the abuse of drink." (The italics are our own.) 
The strength of the temperance cause is its weakness. Most 
causes can be argued ; there is something to be said on the 
other side. This cause has no other side. Like the man 
found without a wedding garment, the liquor traffic is speech- 
less. When Mr. Gough called on his audience at Oxford to 
select a representative of the liquor interest, and send him 
upon the platform for a fair debate, each speaker taking ten 
minutes, the audience appreciated the hit, if not the point ; 
no' advocate of the drink could be found, and Mr. Gough was 
allowed to finish his speech without much further interrup- 
tion. We do not mean to say that all the principles incul- 
cated by so-called temperance reformers are undeniable and 
undisputable. We do not even mean to say that all the 
principles laid down by Mr. Gough are so. The reader will 
find his principles and the reasons for them as given by Mr. 
Gough himself in the following pages ; they need neither 
definition nor defence from us. But we do mean to say that 

4 



52 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

the drinking customs of society as they have existed, and 
still to a considerable extent exist, and the drinking traffic as 
it is actually carried on, are without either defence or de- 
fender. We think, too, that all persons experienced in public 
speaking will agree with us that indifference is a more diffi- 
cult foe to convert than open enmity, and that it is always 
easier to debate a somewhat doubtful cause than to present 
the claims of one about which there is no doubt. We hardly 
know what Christian ministers would do for sermons if they 
could not occasionally attack infidel opinions or defend 
Christianity from infidel attacks. It is not the least evi- 
dence of Mr. Gough's oratorical power that he was able 
for over forty years to argue for temperance, and against the 
drinking customs of society and the drink traffic, without 
falling into the folly of some of his contemporaries and de- 
bating with other temperance workers doubtful questions as 
to ways and means. Mr. Gough returned home in August, 
1853, after an absence of two years. He had delivered over 
four hundred lectures. There is no record, so far as we 
know, of the number of pledges which he had taken. 

Since he first began his temperance addresses in 1842 a great 
change had taken place, not only in temperance sentiment, 
but also in temperance methods. A new party had arisen, 
dissatisfied with the slow methods of moral suasion. Moral 
suasion depends on persuading each individual to give up the 
drink ; the new party proposed to keep the drink away from 
all individuals. The necessity of a change had been forced 
upon temperance reformers by bitter experience. Thousands 
of men had signed the pledge only to yield to the influence 
of old cronies and the attractions of the bar-room, and return 
to drink again. The argument for the change was a simple 
one. The drink traffic is a social and political wrong ; there- 
fore it should be prohibited. The work of the temperance 
reformers had prepared the way. The indignation of the 
country had been aroused against the traffic ; and not a few 
who were not themselves, on principle, total abstainers, were 
willing to join in a movement to close the bar-rooms. Pro- 
hibition had been adopted in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode 



INTRODUCTION. 53 

Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York. 
The temperance campaign had been converted from a moral 
to a political campaign. The new movement had extended 
from America to Great Britain. The temperance workers 
there organized in two wings ; the one working on the. public 
conscience and public opinion, by pamphlets and addresses, 
the other for such legal changes as would eventually bring 
about the total suppression of the liquor traffic by law. The 
first were organized in the "National and Scottish Temper- 
ance League ; " the second in the " United Kingdom Alliance." 
The National and Scottish Temperance League, organized in 
1856, but growing out of the London Temperance League, 
organized in 1851, was the result of a union of several tem- 
perance societies which had previously done good work in 
temperance agitation by moral methods ; the Alliance, organ- 
ized at Manchester in 1853, announced from its birth its 
purpose " to promote the total and immediate legislative sup- 
pression of the traffic in all intoxicating liquors as beverages." 
We do not propose to argue here the question of prohibi- 
tion. We do propose to state what we suppose to be the 
principles which must be applied in determining that ques- 
tion. We have no doubt of the right of the community to 
prohibit the liquor traffic. It has a right to do whatever is 
necessary for its own self-protection. No private property 
right is superior to the general right of the community to 
self-protection. France prohibits the importation of all 
American pork, because some American pork has trichinaB. 
The United States prevents the importation of Egyptian rags 
because the cholera is raging in Egypt and the rags may be 
infected. By the same right the community may prohibit 
the importation, sale, and manufacture of alcoholic liquors, 
the general evils from which to the community far exceed 
those threatened by either trichinaB or cholera. The one 
evil is remote, the other near ; the one hypothetical, the 
other certain ; the one relatively small, the other gigantic in 
its proportions. The right to regulate cannot be defended 
without conceding the. right to prohibit. If the State has a 
right to prohibit the sale to minors, because of the evils which 



54 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

such sale produces, it has a right to prohibit the sale to 
adults because of the greater evils which that sale produces. 
If it may prohibit the sale on Sundays, it may prohibit the 
sale on week-days. If it may prohibit the sale, except by a 
few specially licensed venders, it may prohibit the sale except 
by a few specially appointed agents. The right of prohibition 
is established by a hundred analogies and precedents. It is 
undisputable. 

But right is one thing and power is another. This distinc- 
tion which Burke has so admirably illustrated, has been often 
lost sight of in legislation. A mere majority may have the 
right, but it has not the power, to prohibit the liquor traffic in 
any free community. It can undoubtedly put a law on the 
statute book or a clause in the constitution ; but this is not 
enough. There are some things which a mere majority can 
do ; there are other things which it is powerless to do. It 
can determine on new policies ; it cannot make new crimes. 
A law prohibiting any act as criminal has no greater power 
in a free community country than the public conscience of 
the community. In the reign of Charles II., when adultery 
was a jest in society and on the stage, a law prohibiting adul- 
tery would have been valueless. In Utah a law prohibiting 
polygamy is of no effect, even with the United States gov- 
ernment and United States judges to enforce it. A single 
policeman can put to flight a crowd of roughs ; because the 
roughs know that he has behind him, invisible, the entire 
force of the moral portion of the community. But he is 
powerless to close a liquor saloon, if the saloon keeper knows 
that the communit}^ is evenly divided on the question whether 
his selling is a crime or not. In such a divided state of pub- 
lic sentiment the law becomes a dead letter. Grand juries 
will not indict ; district attorneys will not prosecute ; petit 
juries will not convict ; judges will not sentence ; and 
governors will pardon. To make any criminal law effective, 
the conscience of the vast majority of the community must 
sanction it. The conscience of the vast majority has not yet 
been educated to the point of regarding the liquor traffic as 
a crime. It is so regarded by only a small majority even in 



INTRODUCTION. 55 

the most temperate States, with perhaps the single exception 
of Maine ; in most of the States not even a small majority so 
regard it. A change in the public conscience must precede 
any effectual change in the public law. 

We believe that these principles are not only sound but 
self-evident. We shall leave our readers to ascertain for 
themselves Mr. Gough's position on this matter from his own 
words in the pages of this volume ; but this we understand 
to be substantially his position. From the very earliest he 
had claimed that the liquor traffic had no moral right to 
exist. His motto had been — to quote his own words — 
"kindness, sympathy, and persuasion for the victim, for the 
tempter, law." His aim had been — we quote his own words 
again — "not only prohibition, but annihilation." But he 
had never been an active prohibitionist. His critics afterward 
declared that " he was no enthusiast in his attachment to the 
cause of prohibition." If by this they meant that he had 
never been an enthusiastic laborer in the cause of immediate 
law reform, the statement is undoubtedly correct. He had 
been an enthusiast in the work of changing public sentiment. 
He had no fear but that when public sentiment was made 
right the rectifying of the law would follow. It was declared 
of him that he had even said, "Do not expect prohibition 
until you have four fifths of the community on your side." 
Whether Mr. Gough ever did say this we do not know. It 
was attributed to him by an assailant ; and anything attri- 
buted to him by an assailant is presumably false. On the 
other hand, Mr. Gough was a sensible man, and this is a very 
sensible remark. We have but one criticism to make upon 
it. We doubt whether a majority of four fifths is quite 
enough to ensure the success of a prohibition policy. We 
should ourselves be inclined to call for a larger majority. 

Mr. Gough, returning to the United States at almost the 
very time that one of the foremost advocates of prohibition 
was setting sail for England, found in New England the 
prohibition policy adopted on the statute books and disre- 
garded in execution. The policy which ruled in the Eastern 
States was the policy of the voter who sarcastically remarked 



56 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

that lie was " in favor of the Maine law and against its ex- 
ecution." It had been repealed in Maine, but the prohi- 
bitionists felt confidence that it would be re-enacted with 
more stringent provisions the following year ; and they were 
right. It has never been repealed there since. But it was 
either ill-executed or not executed at all in Massachusetts, 
Ehode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont. 
In New York it had been declared uu constitutional by the 
Court of Appeals. The confident assertion that it would be 
re-enacted by the people of that State has not proved true. 
That State has never again given a majority nor even an in- 
fluential minority for prohibition. Mr. Gough, finding this 
condition of affairs, in writing to a friend in England, told 
him the facts. He kept no copy of the letter. The letter 
itself was lost or mislaid. His friend gave certain portions of 
it to the public as containing matter of public interest. The 
published portions of this letter were as follows : — 

The cause in this country is in a depressed state ; the Maine law is a dead 
letter everywhere, — more liquor sold than I ever knew before in Massa- 
chusetts, — and in other States it is about as bad. Were it not that I feel 
desirous of laboring with you again, I should be inclined to ask for the loan 
of another year to labor here. I never had so many and so earnest applica- 
tions for labor ; and the field is truly ready, not for the sickle, but for steady, 
persevering tillage; but we shall leave out* dear home in July, with the 
expectation of laboring with you, as far as health and strength will permit 
for the next three years. . . . 

I see that Neal Dow is to be* in England. I am glad. You will all like 
him ; he is a noble man, a faithful worker. He can tell better than any other 
man the state of the Maine law movement here, and the cause of the uni- 
versal failure of the law to produce the desired results. 

Mr. Gough was very severely criticised for writing this 
letter. We are unable to see the justice of the criticism. 
Parties were divided in England, as in America, on the ques- 
tion whether the chief work of the temperance reformers 
should be moral or legal; whether they should work on 
public opinion or on Parliament. This was an important 
question. There was every reason why Mr. Gough should 
give to his friends in England the benefit of American ex- 
perience. There was absolutely no reason why he should 
not. The recipient of the letter has also been severely criti- 



INTRODUCTION. 57 

eised for giving it to the public. It is certainly true, as a 
o-eneral thing, that private letters should not be published. 
But it is a rule which has many exceptions. The expression 
of opinion by a well-informed temperance reformer respect- 
ing the actual results of a new temperance experiment would 
seem to constitute such an exception. There was nothing in 
the paragraph published of a personal nature ; nothing which 
Mr. Gough might not have said in public ; nothing which he 
did not afterwards say; nothing of a secret or confidential 
nature. 

But the publication of this innocent letter produced a 
most tremendous excitement in temperance circles in Great 
Britain. One cannot read the pages on pages of newspaper 
correspondence to which it gave rise without a feeling of 
commingled astonishment and amusement that so small a 
spark should have kindled so great a fire. Neal Dow was 
just arriving in Great Britain when this letter was given to 
the public. The "Temperance Alliance" was just inaugu- 
rating a political temperance campaign, with him for the chief 
speaker. They chose to regard this letter as a direct assault 
on them and their methods. They declared that it " was not 
worthy of notice," and then ransacked America with letters 
and circulars to disprove it. They declared of Mr. Gough 
that " upon prohibition he was not and never was supposed 
to be an enthusiast;" that his statement was "entirely 
untrue, as a very little inquiry would have led Mr. Gough to 
know ; " " that no one even now really believes the statement 
that Mr. Gough has made; for, fortunately, it is so mon- 
strously absurd that no one can believe it, even when they 
try to make others swallow the camel ; " " that it must have 
been written by an individual who, at the time of writing, 
did not understand what he was saying." The excuses made 
for Mr. Gough by his critics were more aggravating than 
their accusations ; their charity was harder to bear than their 
malice. One attributed it to his " dramatic imagination ; " 
another remarked that he was not an authority on questions 
of fact; a third, that he probably wrote it "in a fit of un- 
reasonable depression ; " a fourth, that it ought to be excused 



58 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

because it was in a private letter not intended for publica- 
tion. The " Glasgow Commonwealth," however, surpassed 
all the rest in the kindness of its explanation: "All his 
friends know that he is subject to fits of severe mental 
depression ; in short, he has not so fully recovered from the 
effect of stimulants as to escape from the peculiar malady 
commonly called the 'blues.'" In the midst of this excite- 
ment Mr. Gough arrived in Liverpool to enter on a second 
temperance campaign which had been arranged for before his 
departure for America the year before. We do not need to 
repeat here the evidences adduced by him in support of his 
statement, nor that furnished by his opponents in refutation 
of it. It was made very clear that there was a very decided 
difference of opinion in the United States respecting the 
efficacy of prohibition and the permanence of the political 
victories already won. Letters were published by Mr. Gough 
from leading ministers, lawyers, senators, and representa- 
tives, temperance workers, prosecuting attorneys, and one 
governor, fully sustaining his declaration. The " blues " 
appeared to be epidemic in New England. Letters were 
published of equal number, if not of equal weight, upon the 
other side. It is needless now, thirty years after, to compare 
the testimony of these witnesses. History has determined 
the question on which they differed. 

Prohibitory laws were enacted in Maine, Vermont, New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. Pro. 
hibition is no longer maintained in any of these States, 
except in Maine and Vermont. The State of Maine has 
but one city of more than twenty thousand inhabitants; 
the State of Vermont, none. In the former State the pre- 
liminary work of education, before the prohibitory statute 
was adopted, was thoroughly done by sowing the State with 
temperance literature from the New Hampshire border to the 
Aroostook. Prohibition prohibits in Maine because public 
sentiment regards the drink traffic as a public curse. Both 
parties sustain it. The conditions which Mr. Gough de- 
mands have been secured. Four fifths of the community 
condemn the liquor traffic. But even in Maine it is doubt- 



INTRODUCTION. 59 

f ill whether prohibition has been truly successful ; while 
outside of Maine and Vermont it has been generally aban- 
doned. It has given place in the other New England States 
to local option. There is no present prospect of its revival 
in New York State. It is still somewhat of an experiment 
in Kansas and in Iowa, and in many cities of the latter State 
is openly ignored. It has commanded a large vote in Ohio, but 
the vote is a long way from the " four fifths " which give pro- 
hibition its moral power in Maine. Prohibition may be the 
ultimate form which liquor legislation will assume in this 
country. That is a question on which opinions may well 
differ; and it is one not necessary for us to discuss here. 
We are writing history, not philosophy; and as matter of 
history there can be no question, in the light of all that has 
occurred since 1857, that the temperance cause was entering 
at that time politically upon a period of reaction and depres- 
sion, and that the Maine law had not proved a success, and 
was not likely to prove a success until an enormous amount 
of preliminary agitation and education had been first done. 
Even if history had proved Mr. Gough mistaken, his mis- 
take would have been poor justification for personal abuse. 
But to a perfect storm of abuse he found himself subjected. 
on his first landing in Liverpool. All the slanders in 
America were showers compared with the steady and per- 
sistent deluge of attack poured upon him. He met a number 
of his friends at a public breakfast on his arrival, and in a 
speech of considerable length, and of a much more philo- 
sophical cast than is customary with him, he defined his 
position. He repudiated with considerable vigor the apolo- 
gies which had been made for him. The fact that his letter 
was a private letter not intended for publication he refused 
to accept as a shield. " If a man," said he, " is a liar to his 
friend, he is a liar to the public." He declared himself a 
believer in the principles of prohibition. He paid a hand- 
some tribute to " our noble friend and coadjutor, Neal Dow." 
He read a number of letters from distinguished temperance 
men from various parts of the United States testifying to the 
facts as he had portrayed them in his letter. He declared 



60 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

« 

that, since his character had been impugned, his character 
must be justified. His friends, by resolutions unanimously 
passed, fully and heartily vindicated him. With this he pro- 
posed to leave the question and go on with his work. But 
there were those who were determined that it should not 
be left ; and since neither open argument nor public abuse 
could efface the impression which Mr. Gough had produced, 
or impair his influence, they set themselves to do it by pri- 
vate slander. The leader in this attempt was Dr. F. R. Lees, 
a representative, perhaps the most prominent representative, 
of the rival temperance society, the " United Kingdom Al- 
liance." 

Of all the influences which demoralize and destroy charac- 
ter, we are inclined to regard partisanship as the most subtle 
and therefore the most dangerous. It corrupts the best 
natures ; it enlists the higher virtues on the side of falsehood 
and inhumanity; it perverts courage into cruelty, serves 
truth with falsehood, makes conscience justify wrong-doing, 
gilds shame with a false honor. It is specious, insinuating, 
subtle, undermining. The partisan begins by identifying 
himself with his party and his cause ; he ends by identifying 
his party and his cause with the cause of universal virtue 
and goodness. He makes it the standard by which to judge 
all men. Whoever supports his cause is a saint; whoever 
opposes it • is a sinner. He makes it the standard by which 
he judges all conduct. Whatever promotes his cause is right ; 
whatever impedes it is wrong. No one of his adherents is to 
be censured ; no act of his opponents is free from the sus- 
picion of an evil motive and the fear of an evil result. The 
Jewish partisan in the time of Christ looked on with approv- 
ing conscience while the mob stoned Stephen. The Roman 
Catholic partisan in the sixteenth century applauded the 
rack of the Inquisition in Spain ; the sword of Alva in the 
Netherlands; the massacre of St. Bartholomew in France. 
It is only in the light of these historic illustrations that we 
are able to understand the course of Dr. F. R. Lees. He 
was a temperance and a prohibition partisan. 

Tn the manifold discussions provoked by Mr. Gough's 



INTRODUCTION. 61 

letter, two articles which reflected on a friend of Dr. Lees, 
by the name of Peter Sinclair, appeared, one in the " Con- 
gregationalist " of Boston, the other in the " Edinburgh 
News." Mr. Gough had nothing more to do with the writing 
of either of these articles than with the writing of the New 
Testament. But Mr. Gough was from Massachusetts and 
the " Congregationaiist " was published in Massachusetts ; 
Mr. Gough was in Scotland, and the " Edinburgh News " 
was published in Scotland. In the judgment of a partisan 
this evidence was quite sufficient to justify the conclusion 
that he inspired both the articles. Dr. Lees determined that 
they should be withdrawn. He proceeded to the accomplish- 
ment of his purpose by writing a letter to a friend of Mr. 
Gough, demanding their instant withdrawal under penalty of 
Mr. Gough's exposure. " Your friend St. Bartholomew," he 
said, "has often been seen narcotically and helplessly in- 
toxicated. I should have announced that fact before, of 
which I have distinct proof; but, out of fear of injuring the 
cause, and out of pity for the saint himself, I forbore, on 
receipt of his apology. ... If Mr. Dexter is not instructed 
to recall his article and apologize for it, and to make amends 
to poor Sinclair, my next letter to the States shall contain all 
the information I possess anent St. Bartholomew himself, 
whom I believe to be as rank a hypocrite and as wretched a 
man as breathes in the queen's dominions." When a man 
makes a threat of this kind to extort money it is called black- 
mail ; when it is made to extort personal influence there is 
no recognized name for it. This letter was followed by 
others in the same line ; if possible more explicit both in 
their declarations and in their threats. The writer declared 
that the saint had been often intoxicated with drugs — .once 
insensibly so — in the streets of London, many times help- 
lessly so in Glasgow ; that there were many witnesses to the 
facts ; that he knew a score of persons who had seen him 
intoxicated ; that two of the occasions were within his own 
certain knowledge ; and he challenged Mr. Gough to bring 
the matter before a jury of twelve Englishmen, and pledged 
himself, "on the honor of a gentleman and the faith of a 



62 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

Christian, to furnish names and adduce further evidence of 
what I have now asserted." Similar letters were written 
to others in England. A secret suspicion was thus set 
afloat in the air. There was but one way to meet it ; Mr. 
Gough took that way. He accepted Dr. Lees's challenge, 
sued him for libel, and brought him before the twelve 
Englishmen of character to make good his assertions. Dr. 
Lees had declared the facts to be within his own knowledge ; 
he had declared that he could furnish the names of a score of 
witnesses cognizant of them ; he had invited the test. The 
case came on for trial. The public interest was great. Mr. 
Gough's counsel opened the case, stated the facts, and called 
Mr. Gough to go into the witness box. Mr. Gough thus at the 
outset offered himself to the opposing counsel for a searching 
cross-examination into his whole life. It was a simple thing 
to do if the charges were wholly false ; it would have been a 
disastrous thing to do if there had been any color of truth 
in them, any ground even for a reasonable suspicion of their 
truth. Mr. Gough carried with him into the witness box a 
little hand-bag. He swore positively that since 1845 never 
had wine, spirits, or any fermented liquor touched his lips ; 
that he had never eaten opium, bought opium, possessed 
opium ; that he had never touched or owned laudanum, 
except on that one occasion before his reformation, when he 
stopped on the edge of suicide ; that the whole story, in all 
its parts, was an absolute fabrication ; that he had nothing to 
do, directly or indirectly, with the publication of either of the 
two articles in the " Congregationalist " and in the "Edin- 
burgh News." Then, in answer to a question from his 
counsel, he opened his hand-bag and took out a little 
memorandum-book. It was one of several. It then appeared 
that ever since the commencement of his lecturing experi- 
ences he had kept a diary. In this diary he entered upon 
every day the place where he spent it, the persons with 
whom he spent it, his occupation, and, if he had lectured, the 
price received for his lecture. He was thus able to fix with 
certainty his exact place and the witnesses who could testify 
to his condition on every day. Slander was dumb. It dared 



INTRODUCTION. 63 

not face that diary. A hurried consultation took place 
between Dr. Lees and his counsel. Then, in Dr. Lees name, 
and in his presence, his counsel retracted the charges. He 
retracted the statement that his client knew of his own 
certain knowledge of Mr. Gough's intoxication. Everything 
was withdrawn. Mr. Gough left the witness stand without 
even being cross-examined. By consent a verdict was given 
for him of five guineas, a sum sufficient to carry costs. The 
case was hardly thus closed before Dr. Lees sent a letter to 
the papers declaring that the retraction made by his counsel, 
in his presence, and after consultation with him, was made 
without his authority and against his protest. This state- 
ment was instantly and indignantly denied by his counsel. 
It is difficult to account for such a phenomenon even by call- 
ing it partisanship. We prefer to leave it unaccounted for. 
Di*. Lees never paid the costs. No persuasions could induce 
Mr. Gough to take the necessary proceedings to compel their 
payment. He had proved not only the /alsity but the utter 
groundlessness of the slander. This sufficed; he paid the 
costs of the proceedings himself. But from that day to his 
death, slander against his good name never rose above a 
whisper. Neither envy, nor malice, nor even partisanship 
dares face that diary. 

Since 1858 a gradual change has taken place in the meth- 
ods of temperance reformation. No special moral reform 
agitation can be kept alive for an indefinite period. The 
public weary of it. They will not go to hear repeated for 
the fortieth time arguments whose conclusions they anticipate 
before they enter the hall, or experiences portrayed with 
which lectures and literature have already made them fa- 
miliar. Temperance meetings and temperance lectures are 
no longer popular. But the practice of total abstinence is 
more common in England and not less common in the United 
States than it was twenty years ago. Dean Stanley has 
borne striking testimony to the diminution of drinking habits 
in the best society in England. The wine breakfasts which 
formed so striking a feature of " Tom Brown at Oxford " are 
now almost unknown at the Universities. In society, the 



64 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

ladies leave the gentlemen over their wine at the close of the 
dinner ; but when the gentlemen join the ladies in the parlor 
they are none the worse for their wine. In the United States 
there may be more room to question whether drinking habits 
are decreasing or no, because immigration counteracts the 
temperance work, and brings every decade a new population 
to be converted. But the statistics indicate that the retail 
trade in liquor does not keep pace with the population. The 
United States government levies a tax of $25 a year on all 
retail liquor dealers, including druggists. Very few escape 
the payment of this tax ; the penalty is heavy and the tax is 
light. The figures at the United States Treasury Department 
in Washington show an absolute decrease in the number of 
the dealers ; ten years ago there were 200,676 retailers ; now 
there are 195,869. These include the druggists. Evidently 
the apparent decrease in temperance enthusiasm does not indi- 
cate a decrease in temperance sentiment, or a weakening of 
the temperance conscience. It only indicates a change in tem- 
perance methods. Temperance is ceasing to be a moral spe- 
cialty. We have tried every specific from constitutional pro- 
hibition in Virginia in 1676 to the prayer crusade in, Ohio in 
1874. Each has done something ; none has done all. Tem- 
perance is taking its place where Paul put it, between right- 
eousness and judgment to come ; where Peter put it, between 
virtue and knowledge. It is coming to be recognized, it has 
come to be recognized, as a necessary element in every manly 
character. We are beginning to teach it in our churches, 
our Sunday schools, our day schools. It is growing from a 
special reform inculcated by temperance lecturers and prac- 
tised by pledged total abstainers, into a generic virtue, incul- 
cated by all our systems of education and belonging to every 
Christian gentleman. This change marks progress not re- 
gress. 

In his later life, Mr. Gough ceased to be a temperance 
lecturer, but his enthusiasm infused all his lectures with 
the principles and interests of temperance. Whether he 
lectured on "Life in London," or on "People I have met," 
or on "Power," he always had something to say on his 



INTRODUCTION. 65 

favorite thenie, and his audience never failed to receive some 
warning against the dangers of drink, or some inspiration 
toward the practice of temperance. He was unquestionably 
the most popular orator in America, — a popularity which 
was steadily on the increase. It was only on the most 
inclement nights, and under the most unpropitious circum- 
stances, that the largest hall in any town or city of the Union 
was not filled, if John 6. Gough was announced to speak. 

Mr. Gough always lectured at high nervous pressure. 
Before he rose to speak, — in some instances, for many hours 
before, — he was harassed by a fear of breaking down, a fear 
which his perpetual success never materially diminished. 
He had hardly begun, however, before he threw himself into 
his subject with an unsparing energy, which often left his 
audience exhausted from mere sympathy. 

The poor air of many of the halls he spoke in and the 
extreme warmth of his own exertions told upon his physique, 
although it did not lessen his spontaneous energy. In the 
winter of 1885, he was obliged to stop in the midst of a lec- 
ture, exhausted, if not poisoned, by the vitiated atmosphere 
so common to our ill-ventilated, crowded halls. It was a 
menacing prophecy of what was soon to come. On one 
Monday evening, Feb. 15, 1886, Mr. Gough was lecturing in 
a crowded church in Frankford, a suburb of Philadelphia. 
During the intense, but unconscious exertions of his oratory, 
he was stricken with apoplexy. It was only when he fell 
prostrate to the floor that those present realized his condition. 
He was lifted up helpless, and from that moment there was 
no hope of his further activity. He was taken to the resi- 
dence of Dr. E. Bruce Burns in Frankford, and his wife and 
relatives were summoned to his bedside. How long he might 
survive the attack, could not then be known. The stroke, 
however, proved fatal; and Mr. Gough, three days later, 
passed quietly away. He died, as he would have desired, in 
the harness. The funeral services, which were held at his 
Hillside home, on Wednesday, Feb. 24, were as simple and 
unostentatious as even he could have wished. It was incom- 
pliance with wishes he had often expressed in his life that no 



QQ PLATFORM ECHOES. 

public funeral was arranged. A few friends and fellow- 
workers from abroad mingled with the personal friends of the 
family in Worcester. Addresses were made, tender, touching, 
and simply affectionate, by Kev. Israel Ainsworth, of the 
Boylston Congregational Church, of the immediate vicinity; 
Rev. Dr. D. O. Means, of Worcester, Mr. Gough's pastor; 
Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor, of the Broadway Tabernacle 
Church of New York city, Mr. Gough's lifelong friend ; and 
Dr. George H. Gould, of Worcester. At the conclusion of 
the services, the casket was taken to Worcester, and placed 
in the Rural Cemetery tomb to await final interment later. 
Memorial services were held- at various points throughout 
the country on the Sabbath following. Of these, the most 
interesting, perhaps, was the meeting held in Mechanics' 
Hall, Worcester, the largest auditorium in the city. Long 
before the hour appointed, the hall was filled to its utmost 
capacity. The speakers were eight in number, and included 
Protestant pastors, Catholic priests, a judge, a college pro- 
fessor, and a representative of the Y. M. C. A. 

We shall not venture here upon a description of either 
Mr. Gough's person or his oratory. Such a description in 
these pages, intended chiefly for American readers, would be 
superfluous. We count him to have been by far the most 
eminent dramatic orator of our time. In the contagious vital- 
ity of his sympathies, in the rapidity of his intellectual move- 
ment, in his power of graphic portraiture of character, in 
the grace and ease of his modest self-possession before an 
audience, in the intensity of his passion, in the tenderness of 
his pathos, in the geniality of his humor, and in the flexibility 
of voice and figure to interpret the soul within, he was with- 
out a superior, on platform or in pulpit, in either England or 
America. But we may add a word of characterization of the 
man. In our judgment, he possessed qualities of a more 
solid and substantial nature, which have been dimmed in 
popular estimation by his brilliant oratorical gifts. No mere 
actor and story-teller could have kept the ear of two nations 
for forty years, as did Mr. Gough. He disavowed being a log- 
ical or philosophical speaker; and it is true that his addresses 



INTRODUCTION. 67 

were never cast in a logical or philosophical form. But it 
is also true that he possessed a mind whose predominant 
characteristic was common sense, and a heart whose pre- 
dominant characteristic was common sympathy. We believe 
that the reader of these pages will find embodied in them 
every fundamental principle which underlies the temperance 
movement, and conspicuously absent from them every idio- 
syncrasy which has marred it. There is no pathological 
nonsense about alcohol in its minutest quantities being 
always a poison, a doctrine which would banish every 
loaf of risen bread from our tables; no exegetical non- 
sense about two kinds of Bible wines, — one fermented, 
the other unfermented, — a doctrine which would banish 
almost every scholarly commentary from our libraries. 
There is no maudlin charity for the drunkard, and no un- 
christian invective against the moderate drinker. There 
is a passionate earnestness against the drink, and a 
Christian sympathy for the drinker. In moral earnest- 
ness Mr. Gough has among eminent temperance workers 
no superior; in large charity it would be difficult to find 
among them his peer. He was a temperance apostle without 
being a partisan. He has done more than any other man to 
lift the temperance reformation out of the plane of a partisan 
agitation into the higher plane of a great Christian movement 
for the regeneration of the individual and of society. Sensi- 
tive to a fault, with a mercurial temperament and an impres- 
sible nature, he was never swerved from his settled convic- 
tions by temporary excitement ; and, as we have seen, had 
the wisdom to foresee the dangers which threatened the tem- 
perance cause from the attempt to change a moral into a 
merely political agitation, and the courage to pursue his own 
way undeviated by the wild excitement of others, and unhin- 
dered by their opposition and abuse. His instincts, his sympa- 
thies, and his mind were broad; identification with one great 
cause did nothing to narrow him. Without early education 
or early culture, he took on both with wonderful facility; 
was welcomed, not merely tolerated, in the best society, and 
moved in it the recognized peer of gentlemen, scholars, and 



68 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

statesmen. He never forgot the bitter and degrading expe- 
riences of his early years ; but no vulgarity in word and no 
discourtesy or rudeness in act ever reminded others of it. 

Greatness is quite as often an accident as an achievement. 
More men are born great or have greatness thrust upon 
them than achieve greatness by their own effort. What we 
call greatness is quite often, perhaps oftenest, the result 
of position rather than of character. Mr. Gough was 
neither born great nor did he have greatness thrust upon 
him. He achieved it; achieved it in spite of tremendous 
odds ; in spite of hate from enemies, and rivalry and jealousy 
from pseudo-friends; in spite, too, of a shrinking, a lack of 
self-esteem, a nervous timidity which is generally at once 
the greatest weakness and the greatest power of all true 
orators. He not only achieved greatness, he retained it. 
It has been well said that it is more difficult to keep 
money than to acquire it: the remark is equally applicable 
to influence and position ; and no influence is so difficult to 
retain as that of the popular orator. Curiosity listens to 
him at first with enthusiasm ; but repeated hearings satisfy 
curiosity, and enthusiasm gives place to a languid interest. 
If the popular orator defies public sentiment, it either over- 
whelms him, or flows away and leaves him without an 
auditor. If he flatters the public, every new flattery must 
surpass its predecessor, till by and by flattery dies of its own 
extravagance. Mr. Gough not only achieved a position of 
pre-eminence among the orators of America and England, 
and this without any advantages of either birth or culture, 
but he retained that position during nearly half a century, 
in spite of changes of public thought and feeling respecting 
his chosen theme which would have rendered the speech- 
making of any ordinary man born upon the platform in 1840 
an anachronism before 1886. 

But Mr. Gough was not an ordinary man. He . combined 
qualities not often seen in combination. To the thoughtless 
auditor who went to hear him much as, if less Puritanically 
minded, he might have gone to hear Booth or Irving, Mr. 
Gough was only a remarkable story-teller, with an actor's 



INTRODUCTION. 69 

knack and a rare versatility of emotion which mingled the 
pathetic and the humorous in artistic proportions. But to 
one who knew him at all intimately, and studied either his 
character or his work at all carefully, it was quite clear that 
no such superficial estimate could account for his hold upon 
his audience for even a single night, much less for his influ- 
ence upon two nations during forty years of platform 
oratory. He had that keen sensitiveness which is the secret 
of tact, that broad sympathy with men which is the source 
both of humor and of pathos, that strong English common 
sense which often serves in place of a philosophic culture, 
but for which no philosophic culture is a sufficient substi- 
tute, and that Puritan conscience which gives the highest 
form of moral courage. Without that sensitiveness which 
made him always afraid to face an audience or even to 
enter a room full of company, he could not have touched 
men as he did ; for he touched them because he was so sensi- 
tive to their touch. Without his broad sympathy with men 
he could not have been the dramatic orator that he was ; in 
his portraiture of character he appeared to his audience for 
the moment as the man whom he was depicting, because he 
for the moment entered into the life, however foreign it 
might be to his own. Without his strong English common 
sense he could not have been identified with the temperance 
cause for nearly half a century and never identified with 
any of the vagaries and the isms which have cast such dis- 
credit upon it. Without his strong Puritan conscience he 
could not have withstood as he did the attacks of foes who 
are now forgotten, or remembered only by their unsuccessful 
assaults upon him ; . he could not have remained, from his 
first entrance upon the platform to the day of his death, a 
firm adherent to the doctrine that temperance is a Christian 
virtue, that Christ is the redeemer from intemperance as 
from every other sin, and that every attempt at temperance 
reform, whether by Washingtonian pledges or political 
measures, if dissociated from the Christian faith and the 
Christian Church, is doomed to inevitable failure. 

His home at Hillside was a model, in neatness, culture, and 



70 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

unostentatious comfort, of what a Christian home should be. 
The winding avenue leading up to the house suggested the 
descriptions which we so often read in English stories of the 
approach to an English country seat. Five acres of lawn 
sloped down toward a meadow land, melting into a valley 
across which one looked upon rounded wooded hills ; here 
smooth and velvety, where the farmer gathered his grass ; 
there clothed with woods of varied hues of green, where the 
axe has gone only to thin out the underbrush. Within, the 
house spoke in plain language of much attention to the cul- 
ture and the comforts of life, and none to its show and its pre- 
tension. Mr. Gough's family consisted of the wife and four 
adopted daughters — he had no children of his own — and an 
adopted son, engaged in the orange culture in Florida. The 
library of over 3,000 volumes was rich in Christian litera- 
ture and in art. Among the books were some rare vol- 
umes which are monuments to Mr. Gough's personal skill in 
his old trade as a bookbinder. He mounted with his own 
hands, in his summer recreation, nine volumes of photo- 
graphs, a rarely beautiful collection apart from its associa- 
tional value ; for each photograph is a reminder of some 
scene visited, some pleasure experienced. Still more nota- 
ble is his collection of Cruikshankiana. This collection 
comprises twenty-six large folio volumes, and contains up- 
ward of 3,700 engravings, and more than 200 original draw- 
ings. These are classified and carefully indexed. The work 
was Mr. Gough's summer recreation for years. The result 
is certainly the finest collection in existence of the works of 
the greatest master of caricature. Many other are the me- 
mentoes of the work he did and the friendships he formed, 
which the casual visitor would hardly notice, but which the 
inmate of the household generally discovered ; the silver ink- 
stand on the library table ; the set of china manufactured in 
England, with a portrait of Mr. Gough on each piece ; the 
collections of photographs presented by different temperance 
societies ; the welcome signed by ministers of different denom- 
inations on his return to America after his second visit to 
England; another memorial, signed by leading citizens, min- 



INTRODUCTION. 71 

isters, and temperance reformers in New England, New York, 
New Jersey, Penns} T lvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan ; a 
third, with 1,100 signatures, presented to him in Huntingdon- 
shire, England, each signature an implied pledge and an 
explicit approval of the principle of total abstinence ; a 
fourth, presented on behalf of a Christian temperance society 
formed in London by fifteen young men who had been stimu- 
lated to their work by Mr. Gough's addresses, and presented 
in a chapel which had grown out of the work to which he 
had inspired them ; several great volumes of signatures to 
the pledge which he obtained in his various tours, some 
autographs, others duplicate copies of the lost originals — 
these are among the memorials which made this Christian 
home in some sense a monument of a busy and profitable 
Christian life. Of the home life of Mr. Gough with his 
delightful family we have no right here to speak. For we 
still hold, despite some eminent authorities to the contrary, 
that the private life of even a public man is his own, which 
no penman has a right to invade, and which no one has a 
right to invite the common public to inspect. 

Among the memorials which give this home a peculiar and 
historic sacredness is a silver trowel, bearing the following 
inscription : — 

"Presented to 
J. B. GOUGH, Esq., 

ON HIS LAYING THE 

CORNER STONE 

OF 

COFFEE TAVERN, 

IN 

SANDGATE, KENT, 

JUNE 2d, 1879." 

This trowel suggests to him who knows its history and 
significance the story of Mr. Gough's life. On the 4th of 
June, 1829, John B. Gough, then a boy of twelve years of 
age, took his seat on the mail coach that ran through the 
then humble and straggling village of Sandgate, to join 
the ship that was to carry him across the Atlantic with the 
family to which he was apprenticed. The last sight he saw, 



72 PLATFORM ECHOES. 

as the coach rolled away from the village, was the figure and 
the tear-bedewed face of his mother crouching behind the 
low wall built to guard the village from the inroads of the 
sea ; she had come out to get a last fond look at her boy. 
He left behind him a loyal and loving mother, a sturdy and 
honest father ; but almost nothing else. It was a poor home 
he went out from, and an unknowD name he bore. On the 
5th of June, 1879, fifty years almost to a day from that 
morning, he. came back to his native village to lay the corner 
stone of a coffee tavern bearing his name, and reared partly 
by funds raised through his influence. During that fifty 
years Sandgate had grown from a hamlet of 120 houses, with 
a population of 700, to a thriving and growing town of 2,400 
population. A procession, including the representatives of 
the town, the local clergy, the military, and two temperance 
societies, accompanied the orator to the place where the 
ceremonies were to take place. The onlookers who lined 
the way greeted him with cheers. As he approached the 
town a body of stalwart men stepped forward, and, removing 
the horses, dragged the carriage containing the once un- 
known boy, but now world-famous orator, to the site of the 
Gough Coffee Tavern, in the centre of the village, where the 
stone was laid, and where a characteristic address was given, 
to a throng which not even the pouring rain could disperse. 
These two scenes, framing in the busy intervening years, tell 
their own story of battle fought and victory won. Mr. 
Gough's life is more eloquent than his oratory. His prin- 
ciples, and the fidelity with which he maintained them, 
have earned him the respect, as his dramatic eloquence 
won for him the admiration, of two nations ; while his sym- 
pathy and helpfulness have won for him that which is better 
than either, — the love and blessings of unnumbered myriads 
whom his words have inspired with a lofty purpose, a noble 
ambition, and a divine hope, and perhaps rescued from 
poverty, degradation, and hopeless wretchedness, to a life of 
honored manhood here, and a hope of glorious immortality 
hereafter. 





fflJSiflSl 




ft 



^tfy 



CHAPTER I. 

HABIT — ITS POWER, USE, AND ABUSE — HOW TO SUBDUE 
A TYRANT AND SECURE A FRIEND. 



What I Aim to Give — The Lessons of Experience — A Peculiar Clock — 
" What on Earth will that Fellow do Next ? " — " Oh, I Bite my Nails " — 
Ridiculous Habits — Scene at a Railway Ticket-Office — Memory — Recog- 
nizing a Deserter After Thirty Years — Slaves of Fashion — Description 
of the Suit I Wore at Twenty-One —'The " Style" Forty Years Ago — A 
Stunning Attire — A Remarkable Inventory — Avarice — "Only a Little 
More"— The Vice of Lying — The Habit of Swearing — The Boy Who 
Swore by "Old Dan Tucker" — "I'm Sot, Yes, I'm Sot"— Daniel 
Webster's Testimony — Two Words Spoken in Season — Ruin and Re- 
morse — "By and By" — A Persistent Lover — A Narrow Escape — 
" Come Down Wid Ye. Thady" — The Warfare of Life. 



HE public do not expect from 
me a literary entertainment, 
an intellectual feast, or a 
logical argument. I come 
before you, not to tell you 
what I have heard or read, 
but to tell that which I 
know, and to testify to that which 
I have seen. I shall simply aim 
to give some of the results of my 
experience and observation during 
the past forty-three years of my 
public life. The lessons I have learned are the bitter les- 
sons of experience, hard to learn and difficult to forget. I 
care but little for the unity of what I shall say, and I would 




72 WHAT I AIM TO GIVE. 

as soon obtain the reputation a man gave his clock as any- 
other. He said, "I have a very reliable clock, for when 
it points at two, it always strikes twelve, and then I know 
it 's half-past seven o'clock." I care but little in what direc- 
tion I point or how I strike, if I can accomplish my purpose 
of enlisting sympathy for our cause, stimulating investigation 
of our statements, or exciting interest in our behalf. I may 
be so discursive as to remind you of a man who was con- 
stantly astonishing his employer, a farmer, by doing strange 
and unexpected things. One day the farmer went into the 
barn, and found his man had hung himself. Looking at the 
dangling body a few minutes, he exclaimed, " What on earth 
will that fellow do next?" 

Among the ideas expressible by the term "habit" are habi- 
tude, rule, routine, custom, practice, observance, fashion, and 
the like. I shall endeavor, as well as I am able, to discourse 
on habit. I shall probably utter many of what critics call 
commonplaces. It is often the custom to use the term com- 
monplace with contempt; but are there not fresh truths, 
delicious as flowers on the world's highway, often to be 
found in commonplaces? 

Sir Walter Scott, once hearing his daughter speak of some- 
thing as vulgar, asked her if she knew the meaning of the 
word vulgar, remarking, " 'T is only common ; and nothing 
common, except wickedness, deserves contempt ; and when 
you have lived to my years you will thank God that nothing 
really worth having or caring for in this world is uncommon." 
Habit is acquired; instinct is natural; what we are accus- 
tomed to do gives a facility and proneness to do. An old 
writer said, " All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself." 

How insensibly we acquire habits that soon become an 
annoyance and vexation ! Ask that young lady why her 
fingers are so marred and unsightly. " Oh, I bite my nails." 



RIDICULOUS HABITS. 73 

"Why do you?" "I have the habit." "Why do you not 
stop ? " "I can't." " What a bald spot you have on the top 
of your head, why is it ? " " Oh, when I read, I twist the hair 
round my fingers and pull it out." " Why are you so fool- 
ish?" "I have the habit of twisting my hair round my 
ringers when I read, and the habit is so strong that I cannot 
read with comfort unless I finger my hair." " What makes 
your fingers so deformed with large joints ? " " Oh, I pull my 
fingers and crack them." " How ridiculous." " Well, I can- 




VICTIMS OF HABIT. 



not help it. I have acquired the habit." So of many habits, 
trifling in themselves, but often sadly annoying to those who 
acquire them. I heard of one man, I believe it was Dr. 
Johnson, who had acquired the habit of touching every post 
he passed in the street, and, if by accident he missed one, was 
uneasy, irritable, and nervous, till he went back and touched 
the post. 

Locke says, " We are born with powers and faculties, capa- 
ble almost of anything, but it is only the exercise of these 
powers and faculties which gives us ability and skill in any- 
thing, and leads on to perfection." Perseverance in a right 
course of action renders it more and more certain, the longer 
we continue it. Each act of goodness imparts new strength 
to the will, and renders it more certain that the act will be 
repeated. 



74 PATIENCE AND POLITENESS. 

Habit is second nature ; we can almost make ourselves 
what we will ; how many rude, surly, ungracious people we 
meet who, for the lack of common politeness, which might 
be acquired, become morose and disagreeable. I know that 
it is more difficult for some to be polite than for others ; to 
many persons, true politeness, modest, unpretending, and 
generous, seems natural, while others must conquer the dis- 
position to be surly, before they can be civil. To be polite 
under all circumstances requires patience and self-controL 
We hear the remark that such a man — a conductor, for in- 
stance — is uncivil, when, if you could know all the petty 
annoyances, the silly questions asked, vexations by ignorant, 
foolish, and nervous passengers, combined with the care and 
responsibility of an important train, the wonder perhaps 
would be that he is civil at all. Yet we do come in contact 
with bears in manners, men from whom you cannot obtain a 
civil answer to a civil question, who have an idea that civil- 
ity is a species of servility that weakens their independence ; 
but we often expect too much, and if we were inclined to 
exercise the "charity that suffers long and is kind," we 
might not find so much fault. I sat once for an hour in the 
ticket-office of a railway station, and wondered how it was 
possible for the agent to keep his temper ; it certainly did 
require great self-control and patience. 

" "When does the next train start ? " " Two o'clock for 
Boston." 

" What time is it ? " " Quarter of two." 

" Is your time right ? " " Yes." 

" I want a ticket to Newton." " This is an express train ; 
does n't stop." 

" Don't it stop anywhere ? " " Stops at Framingham." 

" Can't I stop at Newton ? " " No." 

" When does the next train go ? " " Four o'clock." 



AN EXASPERATING TRAVELLER. 



75 



" Does that stop ? " " Yes." 

"How long does it take to go to Newton?" " An hour 
and a half." 

" Can't I go by the express ? " " That train don't stop at 
Newton." 

" Well, give me a ticket. How much ? " " One dollar." 
« Is that a good bill ? " " Yes." 

"When did you say the train started?" 
" Express at two ; the other at four." 
" Express don't stop 
at Newton ? " " No." 




A MAN WE OFTEN MEET. 



" The other does ? " 
" Yes. Please stand out 
of the way." 

" Well, you need n't be so huffy 
about it." 

All this while other passengers are 
calling for tickets and asking ques- 
tions. How can a man speak very 
civilly on such an occasion ? 
It is hard to be civil under certain circumstances. " Why 
don't you take off your hat ? " said a lord to a boy struggling 
to lead a calf. " So I will, if your lordship will hold my 
calf." An eccentric gentleman offered this apology for not 
taking off his hat while speaking to George the Third, when 
hunting : " My hat is fastened to my wig, my wig is fastened 
to my head, I 'm on a high-trotting horse, and if anything 
goes off, we must all go off together." There is a power in 



76 "OH, I FORGOT! I FORGOT!" 

suavity, and a charm in simple politeness, far greater than all 
the studied manners of the most polished courtier, and it will 
pay in the long run to cultivate the habit of politeness. 

Memory itself may be greatly strengthened by habit. 
What mistakes and errors are made, and, I might say, crimes 
are committed, through forgetfulness. " Oh, I forgot ! I for- 
got ! " Yes, forgot to post the letter to the physician when 
that poor girl lay in an agony. She is dead ; the doctor 
failed to reach her because you forgot. " I forgot to give 
the message." Yes, a message that, if delivered, would have 
brought that only son to the deathbed of his mother, and she 
died without a sight of her boy, crying for him to the last. 
" I forgot ; " is that an excuse ? I know some inherit a 
remarkable power of memory and never forget. When 
Douglas Jerrold was a midshipman, he was left in command 
of the gig while the commander went up into the town. Two 
men asked permission to go ashore to buy fruit. " Yes, you 
may go, and you may as well buy me some apples and pears." 
" All right, sir." The men deserted, and Jerrold was dis- 
graced. Thirty years after, in London, he saw a baker in the 
street, carrying a load of bread on his head. Walking up he 
laid his hand on the baker's shoulder, and said : " I say, my 
friend, don't you think you have been rather a long time 
after that fruit?" " Lor', sir, is that you?" After thirty 
years' separation, they recognized each other at once. Some 
people can find room in their memory for but one thing at a 
time. " Where is the medicine you were to bring from the 
city?" " Oh, I forgot that: I was to get some fruit and 
medicine; I have the fruit, but I forgot the other." It is 
our duty to set ourselves diligently at work to remedy, as far 
as we may, even a natural defect ; and I believe a man can 
overcome a natural propensity and remedy a natural defect 
if he sets himself to work, by God's help and the power of 
his own will. 



SLAVES OF FASHION. 



77 



What absolute slaves we are to fashion or custom ! Health, 
comfort, usefulness, even life, sacrificed in obedience to its 
commands. Fashion bids that a young lady must yield the 
beautiful symmetry of her figure to be squeezed, braced, com- 
pressed, and laced, till the "human form divine" becomes so 
distorted that a sculptor would copy it only as a deformity. 
For fashion's sake we invite pain, from 
corns on the toes to neuralgia in the 
head; we court the ridiculous, and wel- 
come the absurd. We must all con- 
form to fashion. Better be out of the 
world than out of the fashion. Few 
young men would have the courage to 
wear in the street now the suit I wore 
at twenty-one ; a plum-colored coat 
with high collar, tight sleeves, narrow 
body, — so narrow that to get into it 
you must obey the directions of the 
negro, " Now, sah, first shove one arm 
in, then t'other, and give one general 
conwulsion," — bright brass buttons, 
long slender tails; with trousers the 
same color as the coat, fitting tightly 
to the skin, strapped down so close that, in sitting, you felt 
that something must go somewhere (and something was con- 
tinually going somewhere ; a man never fell down and got 
up whole in those days); — a figured velvet waistcoat, so 
contrived as to exhibit a broad domain of shirt-front ; with 
a collar stiff and starched, pushing out some inches in ad- 
vance of the chin ; and a silken stock buckled so tight as to 
prevent seeing the feet without an effort ; boots narrow and 
pointed, with room enough beyond the toes for part of a 
pound of cotton ; and a hat very stove-pipey, inclining 




"STYLE," 
FORTY YEARS AGO. 



78 



A REMARKABLE INVENTORY. 



slightly to the bell, and broad in the brim. Yet that was 
" style " forty odd years ago, and the present fashion would 
have been considered as absurd then as that is now. 

I am not sufficiently acquainted with ladies' dress for criti- 
cism; but I know their apparel requires ribbon, insertion, 
braid, lace, silk, whalebone, steel springs, buttons, muslin, 
tassels, velvet, beads, 
spangles, worsted, 
fringe, tatting, ruffles, 
gimp, flounces, founda- 
tions, tucks, puffs, 
skirts, ruches, waists, 
belts, padding, collars, 
cuffs, frills, under- 
sleeves, spit curls, 
nets, veils, rosettes, 
bracelets, finger and =a j 
ear rings, mitts, furs, ^B 
capes, victorines, muffs, 
gloves, switches, plum- 
pers, chains, brooches, 
pins, hooks and eyes, 
plumes, hair-pins, 
combs, powder, rouge, 
artificial flowers, chate- 
laines, fans, parasols, 
handkerchiefs, perfum- 
ery, newspapers, and many other articles too numerous to 
mention. An old man with a rag-bag in his hand, picking 
up pieces of whalebone and other matters in the street, was 
asked, " How did all those things come here ? " " Don't 
know; I 'spect some unfortunate female was wrecked here- 
abouts somewhere." 




SCENE OF THE WBECK. 



THE VICE OF LYING. 79 

But there remain habits to speak of, more serious in their 
influence on the moral part of man's nature than those men- 
tioned. Avarice, which has been termed " criminal poverty," 
which makes men grow mean and cruel, and starve and pinch 
themselves, to heap up yellow dust, scratching and scraping 
for that " little more," only a " little more," with hearts as 
hard as the coin they love and as tough as the bag that holds 
their treasure. A man with many thousand dollars, a mem- 
ber of the church in a country town, who is perfectly satisfied 
with the minister, regularly contributes five cents for himself 
and wife to the support of the church every sabbath. This 
is a fact, and no fiction. 

The habit of lying is acquired in the first place by a want 
of reverence for truth as truth ; for instance, in the desire to 
create a sensation by an exaggeration of the simple facts, 
then by occasional equivocation, until, at length, the vice of 
lying becomes a second nature. A man may become a colos- 
sal liar who would lie for the mere sake of lying. In these 
days of sensationalism the danger is greatly increased. 
There is a great difference between relating an anecdote 
merely for the purpose of illustration, as a parable or alle- 
gory, and the exaggeration of a simple fact. A person 
addicted to lying related a story to another which made him 
stare. " Did you ever hear that before ? " said he. " No," 
said the other, " did you ? " I once read of a prisoner who 
was charged with highway robbery. During the trial he 
roared out, "I'm guilty!" when the jury immediately pro- 
nounced him not guilty. " Why, gentlemen," said the judge, 
" did you not hear the man declare himself guilty? " " Yes, 
my lord, and that was the reason we acquitted him, for we 
know the fellow to be such a notorious liar that he never 
told a word of truth in his life." Some of these men might 
be agreeable companions, but the great drawback to your 



80 A TENDER CONSCIENCE. 

enjoyment of their society is the want of- confidence in their 
statements. 

The habit of profane swearing is gradually and almost in- 
sensibly acquired. Many a swearer can remember when he 
shuddered at an oath, and he who now *uses the name of the 
Creator and Redeemer in the most horrible and blasphemous 
associations learned to swear. In his false estimate of man- 
liness he uttered his first oath perhaps with a trembling 
heart, conscience upbraiding him; but among those who 
swear he must swear too. There is no habit more foolishly 
and insanely wicked than this. All sin is folly, but this is 
pure folly and wickedness. Men generally sin for profit or 
pleasure, for preferment, or indulgence of some propensity, 
but, to use the language of an old minister, " To swear is to 
bite the bare hook of God Almighty's wrath ; there is no bait 
to tempt to it ; it is simply wicked." 

I know that some make the excuse that they swear with- 
out thinking. If they do, what a fearful illustration of the 
power of habit; but men generally swear because they be- 
lieve it is wicked. Hear a profane man when he is angry ; 
his rage boils over in oaths and curses. A boy was crying 
bitterly. His mother asked, " What 's the matter ? " " I 've 
been swearing." " What did you say ? " " Oh ! I 've been 
swearing, oh dear ! " " Well, my child, what did you say ? " 
" Oh ! oh ! mother — I got mad, and I said, ' Old Dan 
Tucker.' " His conscience troubled him for the intention to 
say something wicked. Young men, it is neither noble, heroic, 
nor manly to swear. It is a mean, offensive sin. To swear 
in public is an outrage that no true gentleman will be guilty 
of. Swear not at all. Break the habit if you have acquired 
it ; conquer it you can. I asked a boy who had overcome 
the propensity, " Did you find it hard ? " " Oh, yes, and it 
comes hard now." I well remember, in a shop where I 



WINNING HIS FIRST VICTORY. 



81 



worked, profanity was so frightfully rampant that an agree- 
ment was made that sixpence should be paid as a fine for 
every oath. One j r oung man, a notorious swearer, was fined 

several times, 
once for say- 
ing with an 
oath that he 
would not be 
fined again. 
One day he 
met with a 
\ provoking ac- 
- cident at his 
work, and the 
ready oath 
sprung to his 
lips. The 
men stopped 
their work to 
watch him. 

He set his teeth, he stamped his feet, his face grew red, the 
veins in his forehead swelled, he clenched his fists, he seemed 
choking, and at last he cried out, " Constamparampus ! 
There ! I didn't swear, did I ? I feel better." It was his 
first struggle against the habit, and it seemed easier for him, 
after that, to refrain. 

Many men pride themselves on their firmness, which is a 
name they give to an acquired obstinacy. " You cannot 
move me," as the old man said, " I'm sot, yes I'm sot, and 
when I'm sot, a meetin'-house ain't sotter ! " Such a man 
doesn't hold opinions, but opinions hold him ; when he is 
possessed of an error, it is like the evil spirit, cast out with 
difficulty ; what he lays hold of he never loses, though it 




THE BOY WHO SWORE BY " OLD DAN TUCKER." 



82 PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

help to sink him ; the slighter and more inconsistent his 
fancies are, the tighter he clings to them. Some of them 
would fall to pieces if he did not. He opposes you in things 
indifferent and frivolous, and would suffer martyrdom rather 
than part with the least scruple of his prejudices. He under- 
stands no man's reason but his own ; his understanding is 
as hard as Pharaoh's heart, and is proof against argument ; 
with him, a prejudice once conceived, or a passion once 
cherished, will resist all rational argument for its relinquish- 
ment. " He will deny all he has never witnessed, and refuse 
to witness all he is resolved to deny." 

In many cases the recklessness of youth, indulged with- 
out restraint, leads to a habit of systematically ignoring all 
individual responsibility. Every man has felt, more or less, 
the consciousness of his personal responsibility to God and 
his fellow-men pressing upon him ; the world's great men 
have acknowledged it as of the highest importance. Some 
years ago, when Mr. Webster was Secretary of State, he was 
dining with a party of friends, by whom great efforts had 
been made to draw him into conversation, but without suc- 
cess. At last one of the gentlemen turned to him and said, 
" Mr. Webster, I want you to tell me what was the most 
important thought that ever occupied your mind." Mr. 
Webster slowly passed his hand across his forehead, looked 
over the table, and said, " The most important thought that 
ever occupied my mind was that of my individual responsi- 
bility as a man to God ! " 

In too many cases a persistent course of selfishness and 
self-gratification stifles and chokes this sense of obligation, 
and men grow into the habit of living simply in reference to 
themselves and the present life. " Oh, if I was ever lucky 
enough to call this estate mine, I should be a happy fellow," 
said a young man. " A?\d then ? " said a friend. " And 



battling for victory. 83 

then ? Why, then I 'd pull down the old house and build a 
palace, have lots of prime fellows around me, keep the best 
wines and the finest horses and dogs in the country." 
"And then?" "Why, then I'd hunt, and ride, and smoke, 
and drink, and dance, and keep open house, and enjoy life 
gloriously." "And then?" "Why, then, I suppose, like 
other people, I should grow old and not care so much for 
these things." "And then?" "Why, then, I suppose, in 
the course of nature I should leave all these pleasant things 
and — well, yes — die ! " " And then ? " " Oh, bother your 
4 thens ; ' I must be off." Many years after, the friend was 
accosted with, " God bless you ; I owe my happiness to 
you!" "How?" "By two words spoken in season long 
ago, — 'and then?'" 

Would I could reach some young man who is drifting into 
the dead sea of an aimless life, — an aimless existence. What 
a mockery of life ! Who can describe the fearful void, the 
yearning for an object, the self-reproach for wasted powers, 
the weariness, the loathing of pleasure and frivolity, the 
consciousness of a deadening life, a spiritual paralysis, with 
no response to human interests, no enthusiasm, no sympathy 
with noble deeds; when the world becomes a blank, and 
nothing is left but the heavy benumbing weight of personal 
helplessness and desolation. Better, nobler, to stand face to 
face with wrong and sin, battling ever for victory, than as a 
human machine in one daily round of self-indulgence, dul- 
ness, and folly. Oh, let my pulses swell like a torrent, and 
pour themselves out till they cease. Let heart and brain 
work their work. Be my life short and swift as a shuttle 
through the loom. Let it be a life full, strong, rich. Though 
it be but a day only, it shall be as one of the days of God, 
which are as a thousand years. 

Time would fail to enumerate the many habits that, 
6 



84 A PITIFUL SPECTACLE 

acquired and indulged, mar the beauty and destroy the sym- 
metry of the true man. Oh, if we could find one man free. 
Is there such a one ? Stand up ! thou grand image of a true 
manhood. Raise that face, sublime in its gentleness, with 
the pure lips through which the foul impieties of boasting 
youth have never yet passed, with the eyes that have not 
scorned to let their lashes droop over a tear of sorrow or 
sympathy for others ! Lift up the hand which never used 
its strength against a weaker fellow-creature! Stand forth 
in the midst of a debased and degraded world, adorned with 
integrity, sobriety, chastity, and all virtue ! Stand up ! noble 
and meek-hearted, and show us the likeness of a man. We 
love to contemplate such a vision, and turn away to look 
sadly on men as they make themselves. 

Is it not pitiful to see the many, many slaves of evil 
habit, pressing hard into the ranks, and enlisting under the 
black banner of intemperance, licentiousness, and the hosts 
of debasing, degrading passions, that cling to and destroy the 
victim, alluring, fascinating like the fabled vampire, fanning 
to sleep with its broad wings while he draws vitality at every 
breath ? Look at him ! Stand up, if you can, victim of 
vice ! Stand up, if you dare, slave to intemperance and its 
companion sins ! See how habit, with its iron net, envelops 
him in its folds ! He curses his misery, while he hugs the 
chains that bind him ; he frets his very heart-strings against 
the rivets of his fetters, forever protesting against the fierce 
over-mastering curb-chain that galls him, yet forever sub- 
mitting to receive the horrible bit in his mouth. Behind 
him lowers the thunder-cloud of retribution ; before him is 
the smooth steep whose base is ruin and despair. By his 
own will he rushes on ; every particle of the propelling power 
emanates from himself ; yet he shrieks in agony as he remem- 
bers his former hopes and ambitions. 



RUSHING TO DESTRUCTION. 



85 



Then, in the noisy revel, the debauch, and fierce excite- 
ment of drink, he tries to forget his being. Memory is his 
foe, so he flies for false solace to the wine-cup. He stuns his 
enemy at evening, but she rends him like a giant in the 
morning. Once he could pray ; once he loved purity ; once 
he drank from the fountain-head of peace. He thinks of 
this and it maddens him. The mother's hymn that once 
lulled him to sleep now rings in his ear and wakes him to 
agony. His face once bore God's image ; now the foul brand 
of intemperance is on his 
brow, sensuality sits upon 
his lip, the dull water of 
disease stands stagnant in 
his eye, and the bright 
image of God is marred. 
Once purity was his gar- 
ment ; now he is appa- 
relled in the filthy livery 
of his tyrant master. He 
bartered his freedom for 
a lust, and now endures 
unutterable thraldom. He sold his birthright for a pleasure, 
and now is cursed with a heritage of woe. He dissolved his 
pearl of price in the cup, and drank it. Thus he rushes on, 
scorned and despised by his fellow-men, his better nature 
loathing the thing he has made himself, carrying a foretaste 
of the undying worm within his breast, wrapped in dull 
despair, or shouting in fearful wildness, or laughing in the 
glee of the maniac, shrinking, shivering, dreading, yet wil- 
fully approaching, he staggers on the brink, shrieking, 
cursing, reeling on the edge. With one look upon the past, 
the mighty deluge of sin rolling after him, he clasps his poor, 
swollen hands, and in mad despair plunges into utter ruin. 




MEMORIES OF THE PAST. 



86 PROCRASTINATION AND INDOLENCE. 

Oh, young men, if you would be great and happy, hold 
the reins, assume and maintain the regal power over your 
passions and appetites, battle every evil propensity bravely, 
breast the tide of temptation ; then you will appreciate and 
realize the truth and power of Solomon's declaration, "He 
that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." 

The habit of procrastination often causes vexation, loss of 
friends, and even ruin. How many utterly fail to accomplish 
their life's work through this habit, never doing what ought 
to be done at the time it should be done ; their life is one 
great neglect. " I intend to do it ! " It is said that the road 
to a certain place is paved with good intentions. Letters are 
received ; I must answer them ; I will, by-and-by. Days pass, 
the by-and-by is as far off as ever, friends are grieved, business 
disarranged, losses are incurred, character is endangered, for 
the lack of promptness. Pass by the house of the procras- 
tinator. How dilapidated and forlorn ! Why ? He has 
intended to repair ; and when the wind and rain drive in, 
oh ! " I must do something ! I will at once ! " Fair weather 
comes ; "I will by-and-by," like the Irishman who said, " Why 
don't I thatch my roof? Because, when it rains, it 's wet, 
and I can't, and when it 's dry, it don't need it." Many a 
man's fortune has been marred by the putting off till to- 
morrow what ought to be done to-day. A large proportion 
of men's sins are not acts committed, but acts they have 
failed to perform. 

A habit nearly allied to this is that of indolence. Some 
men grow unutterably lazy. Thomson, author of "The 
Seasons," was once found by a friend in bed late in the day. 
" Why do you not get up ? " " Oh, I have no motive." In- 
dustry, promptness, and perseverance are essential to success. 
A shiftless, lazy, unstable man never succeeds, except in 
becoming a nuisance. There is a power in persistence. I 



THE PKACTICE OF VIKTUE. 87 

remember a Scotch friend of mine used to speak of per- 
sistence as one of the cardinal virtues. I heard of a man 
who went courting every evening, a distance of three miles 
and back, for fourteen years, walking about fifteen thousand 
miles. He got his wife ; and I hope she was as good as such 
perseverance merited. We often say a man "has made a 
lucky hit," and some men may, by a bold venture, make such 
a hit ; but, as a rule, it is not accident, but a strong purpose 
and patient industry, that helps a man on in the world. 
Read the lives of great men, and you read of resolution, 
patience, and perseverance. By long and sometimes painful 
labor have they wrought a rich inheritance of thoughts and 
deeds for their successors, and for themselves immortality. 

Every man who would break a bad habit must exercise 
patient persistence, never flinching till victory is gained. 
But remember this, young men, — habit strengthens with 
age. In proportion to the loss of shame at a vice is the gain 
of recklessness in pursuing it. Many a man reels through 
the street, drunk at noon-day, whose first act of intoxication 
was a mortification to his pride. The turning becomes more 
difficult. 

The practice of virtue may become a habit by discipline. 
Some men become habitually truthful, honorable, generous, 
and virtuous, and maintain their integrit}' even to their own 
apparent damage. A young man was pointed out to me with 
the remark, "There is a young man who has come out of the 
army as pure as "he entered it." Among those who shall 
inhabit the holy hill are they who swear to their own hurt 
and change not. A poor soldier was seated on the top of a 
stage-coach at the time when in England the penalty for 
overstaying a furlough was flogging. These floggings were 
very severe. Men have died under the lash. He had, or 
thought he had, overstayed his time, and was resolutely set 



88 



THE STORY OF THADY. 



on going to his regiment with the certainty of receiving a 
flogging. Below stood his mother, brother, and sweetheart, 
all earnestly entreating him not to return to certain and 
severe punishment. 

" Come down wid ye, Thady ; come down, now, to your old 
mother; sure it's flog ye they will, and strip the flesh off the 
bones of yez. Come 
down, Thady darlint." 

44 It 's honor, mother 
dear," as he set his teeth, 
and fixed himself more 
firmly on his seat. 

44 Thady, come down, ye 
fool of the world ; come 
along down wid ye." 

44 It 's honor, brother ; 
it 's honor," sitting more erect. 

44 O Thady! come down! sure it's 
me, your own Kathleen, that bids ye ; 
come down, or ye '11 break the heart of 
me, Thady, jewel ; come down, then." 

44 It's honor, honor bright, Kath- 
leen, darlint," as he fixed his eye 
steadily before him. 

44 Come down, Thady, honey." 

44 Thady, ye fool, come down." 

44 O Thady, come down to me ! " was the chorus from 
mother, brother, and sweetheart. 

44 It 's honor, mother ; it 's my promise ; it 's honor, bro- 
ther ; it 's honor bright, my own Kathleen." 

A gentleman, making inquiries, was informed of the facts. 

44 When does your furlough expire, my man ? " 

44 The first of March, your honor, bad luck to it of all the 




COME DOWN WID YE, 
THADY." 



THE IMPORTANCE OF LITTLE THINGS. 89 

black days of the world, and here it is come sudden on me 
like a shot." 

44 The first of March, why, my good fellow, you have a day 
to spare then ; to-morrow is the first of March ; it is leap- 
year, and February has twenty-nine days." 

44 Twenty-nine clays, is it ? Say it again, you 're sure of 
that same ? O mother ! mother ! the divil fly away with yer 
old almanac, a base cratur of a book to be desavin' me, after 
living so long in the family of us." 

Off he jumped from the coach, and 
hugged mother, brother, and Kath- 
leen. 

44 Hurrah! my darlint. Kathleen, 
dear, hurrah! It's a happy man I 
am. God bless your honor, and con- 
found the dirty old almanac; my 
word's saved! May ye live a long 
hundred years, and every one of them 
a leap-year ! " a "desavin cratur." 

Some may complain that I have given undue prominence 
to habits that are deemed trivial ; but can any habit be 
deemed trivial that affects the character for good or evil? 
We grow into the habit, often, of despising little things, and 
yet some of the greatest discoveries have originated in the 
observance of familiar and simple facts. The greatness of 
some of the world's great men is not so much the utterance 
of great thoughts as their readiness to detect the significance 
of little things. Galileo, when eighteen, saw in the cathe- 
dral at Pisa a lamp swinging to and fro, and from that con- 
ceived the idea of the pendulum for marking time. Sir 
Samuel Brown, by noticing a spider's web, conceived the 
idea of the suspension-bridge. Seaweed floating past his 
ship enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny and discover the 




90 THE PATH OF DESOLATION. 

new world. Franklin's first experiments in electricity were 
by a kite made of two sticks and a silk handkerchief. The 
first brushes of West, the painter, were made from the cat's 
tail. Watts's first model of the condensing steam-engine 
was made of a syringe. Professor Faraday made his first 
experiment in an old bottle. Much might be written on the 
value and importance of little things. How little things 
will grow, and how mighty is an accumulation of little 
things ! A flake of snow, how softly and quietly it comes ; 
how small and frail it is, breathe on it and it is gone ; it rests 
on yonder crag, an insect could brush it off with its wing: 
but another falls, and another, descending noiselessly, till an 
avalanche hangs over the valley. Scientists have told us 
that even the motion of air produced by a human voice will 
sometimes loosen a tottering avalanche and send it, like a 
winding-sheet of death, down, down ! The trees in its fearful 
track, that have for centuries stood firm against the mountain 
torrent and braved the mountain storm, with the snapping of 
ten thousand roots and crashing of their giant arms, slip from 
their anchorage and drift away ! The huge rocks, ancient as 
the everlasting hills, roll from their bed and join in the ter- 
rible devastation; the valley is filled with desolation, the 
village is lost in the wreck and ruin, and men in after years 
point tremblingly to the track of the awful avalanche. 

There are those who unfortunately have a constitutional 
tendency to weaknesses or vices, and such may ask, " If I 
am born with impulses and passions so strong, and, in some 
cases, with a will so weak, can I be blamed for the results ? " 
Every man is responsible for his voluntary acts, whatever 
may be the moving impulse. Sin and crime are always sin 
and crime, whatever the constitutional tendency. 

There are facts to prove that one man is born with im- 
pulses and tendencies to particular forms of virtue and vice 



THE WARFARE OF LIFE. 91 

stronger than others. The passions and appetites are more 
difficult to control in those who have inherited them, for 
instance, from parents who have never checked them in their 
own lives, as the inherited appetite for drink. It is much 
easier for those who inherit a placid, even temperament, with 
no strong emotions, to be orderly and virtuous, than for 
some others ; but all can — yes, despite all allurements and 
temptations, all can — conquer evil passions and appetites. 
Here man differs from Jbhe brute ; for man can be what he 
will. Nothing reduces a man nearer to the level of the brute 
than indulgence in habits of selfishness, disregard to the 
rights of others, vice, or immorality. Life is a warfare. 
To some it is more severe than to others , but all may fight 
the good fight and attain the reward. None are born in- 
capable of virtue, though one may be born with such a 
constitutional tendency to wrong that his life will be one 
mighty struggle against the power of evil. But is it not a 
glorious struggle to see a man in God's name battling his 
own evil nature ? Oh, it is sublime, this wrestling with an 
evil desire, this crushing out a wicked passion, this mastery 
of self by the force of his high resolve and the power of the 
mighty will: " I will! I will! by the help of God I will." 

To him that overcometh — ah, yes ! glorious repetition, 
" him that overcometh," seven times repeated, overcometh ! — ■ 
the tree of life, safety from the second death, the white 
stone with the new name, the morning star, the white rai- 
ment, a pillar in the temple, a seat on the throne with Him 
in whose name he has conquered. To him that overcometh. 
Then buckle on the armor, brave heart ; stand firm in the 
fight. If you fall, your enemies shall not rejoice. Ay, 
though you fall ten times, yet up again, battered, bruised, 
covered with scars more glorious than were ever borne by 
earth's greatest warriors, till by-and-by — yes, by-and-by, 



92 



VICTORY. 



standing erect, your armor dented and broken — you shall 
shout Victory, victory ! and the angels will take up the jubi- 
lant hosanna, Victory ! victory ! as you hang your battered 
armor on the battlements of heaven, and, having fought the 
good fight, lay your laurels at the feet of Him through 
whom and by whom you stand redeemed forever from the 
power and dominion of every evil habit. 




LOWER HALL IN MR. GOUGH'S HOUSE. 



CHAPTER II. 

TO YOUNG MEN — SOWING THE WIND AND REAPING THE 
WHIRLWIND — A TALE OF RUIN, REMORSE, AND DEATH. 

Sticking One's Hand in a Rattlesnake's Den — Beware — " Captain, There 's 
One of 'Em"— Sowing Wild Oats — Gliding Down the Stream — " Be 
You a Drugger ? " — The Yerdant Young Man in Search of " Scentin' 
Stuff " —Smelling Round for the Right Thing— A Sniff that Astonished 
Him — The Story of Daniel Webster's Classmate — How Webster Tried to 
Save Him — His Tragic Death — " Get Up ! Get Up ! The Train is Com- 
ing !" — Cries of Despair from the Pit — A Road Strewn with Spectres — 
The Most Painful Scene I Ever Witnessed — Why the Boy Thrashed the 
Cat — A Cold Day for Puss — An Unexpected Scene at the Marriage 
Altar— The Story of Adam and His Whiskey Jug— Cramming Adam 
Into the Closet — A Laughable Story — A Story of Ruin and Death — 
"Tom, Old Fellow, is This You?" — "Too Late, Jem; Don't Leave 
Me " — Taking the Wrong Direction. 




NE favorite argument of 
young men in reference to 
the use of intoxicating drink 
is, " When I find out that it 
is doing me an injury, then 
I will give it up." That is 
making an admission and 
coming to a conclusion. 
The admission is true ; the conclu- 
sion is false. You admit it may 
injure you, and when it has — no, 
there wou]d be some sense in that; but when you find out 
that it has injured you, then you will quit it. You won't 
use such an argument in reference to any other matter. " I 
will put my hand into the den of a rattlesnake, and when I 

93 



94 "CAPTAIN, THERE'S ONE OF 'EM." 

find out that he has stuck his fangs into me I will draw it 
out and get it cured as quickly as possible." There is no 
common sense in that. 

Young men, beware of this thing, because it is a snare. It 
is fearfully deceptive. Every man who drinks intends to be 
a moderate drinker. I have said this over and over again, 
because I believe it to be important. Every man who be- 
comes intemperate does so by. a course of argument from the 
beginning all the way down to ruin. Young men, you say, 
" When I find out that it is injuring me, then I will give it 
up." Is that sensible ? 

I once heard of a pilot who said he could pilot a vessel 
into Boston Harbor. "Now," said he to the captain, "I'll 
stand 'midships, and yo u can take the helm. I know every 
rock in this channel — every one of 'em — I know 'em all, 
and I '11 give you warning." By and by the vessel struck 
upon a rock, and the shock threw everybody down upon the 
deck. The poor pilot got up, rubbing himself, and said, 
" Captain, there 's one of 'em." 

Now we say to young men, " There 's one of them. Hard 
up your helm before you strike ! " That is sensible. If you 
have struck, haul off and repair damages, and then strike 
again. Is that sensible ? In time the poor old battered hulk 
will not bear any more damages, and men will bury you, a 
broken wreck. That is the end of it in many cases. " Wlien I 
find out that it is injuring me, then I will give it up." Gather 
all the drunkards of this country together, and ask them 
every one, "Are you drinking enough to injure you?" A 
large proportion will declare that they are not. Each one of 
them has become a drunkard in the sight of God and man 
before he has become one in his own estimation. 

Intoxicating drink is deceptive in its very nature. It re- 
minds me of the fable of the serpent in a circle of fire. 



SOWING WILD OATS. 95 

A man was passing by, and the snake said to him, "Help 
me out of my difficulty." " If I do, you '11 bite me." " Oh, 
no, I won't." "I 'm afraid to trust you," "Help me out of 
the fire, or it will consume me, and I promise on my word of 
honor I won't bite you." The man took the snake out of the 
fire, and threw it on the ground. Instantly the serpent said, 
44 Now I '11 bite you." 44 But did n't you promise me you 
wouldn't?" 44 Yes, but don't you know it's my nature to 
bite, and I cannot help it." So it is with the drink. It is its 
nature to bite ; it is its nature to deceive. 

Young men say (and I have heard them more than once) 
that they 44 must sow their wild oats." Remember this, 
young gentlemen, 44 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." If you sow corn, you reap corn. If you sow 
weeds, you reap weeds. If you sow to the flesh, you will of 
the flesh reap corruption. But if you sow to the spirit, you 
will of the spirit reap life everlasting. Ah, young men, look 
at that reaping, and then contemplate the awful reaping of 
men to-day who are reaping as they have sown, in bitterness 
of spirit and anguish of soul. "When I find out that it is 
injuring me, THEN I will give it up." 

Surely that is not common sense. Such is the fascination 
thrown around a man by the power of this habit, that it 
must have essentially injured him before he will acknowledge 
the hurt and consent to give it up. Many a man has been 
struck down in his prosperity, has been sent to prison for 
crime, before he acknowledged that his evil habit was injur- 
ing him. I remember riding from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, 
and I said to a gentleman, 4C What river is that, sir?" 
44 That," he said, 44 is Niagara River." 44 It is a beautiful 
stream," said I, " bright, smooth, and glassy; how far off are 
the rapids ? " 4t Only a few miles," was the reply. 44 Is it 
possible that only a few miles from us we shall find the 



96 



GLIDING TO DESTRUCTION. 



water in the turbulence which it must show when near the 
rapids?" "You will find it so, sir." And so I found it, 
and that first sight of Niagara Falls I shall never forget. 
Now, launch your bark on that river ; the water is smooth, 
beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow of 
your boat, and the silvery wake it leaves behind adds to 
your enjoyment. You set out on your pleasure excursion. 
Down the stream you glide ; oars, sails, and helm in proper 
trim. Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, " Young 
men, ahoy!" 
"What is it?" 
"The rapids are 
below you." 
"Ha, ha! we 
have heard of 
the rapids, but 
we are not such 
fools as to get into them. 
When we find we are go- 
ing too fast, then we shall 
up with the helm and steer to the shore ; we will set the mast 
in the socket, hoist the sail, and speed to land. Then on, 
boys, don't be alarmed, there's no danger." "Young men, 
ahoy there ! " " What is it ? " " The rapids are below you.'.' 
"Ha, ha? we will laugh and quaff; all things delight us. 
What care we for the future ? No man ever saw it. Suffi- 
cient for the day is the evil thereof. We will enjoy life 
while we may; we will catch pleasure as it flies. This is 
enjoyment, time enough to steer out of danger when we are 
sailing too swiftly with the current." " Young men, ahoy ! " 
"What is it?" "Beware, beware! the rapids are below 
you." Now you feel them ! See the water foaming all 
around ! See how fast you pass that point ! Up with the 




ON THE BRINK. 



IN SEARCH OF " SCENTIN' STUFF/' 97 

helm ! Now turn ! Pull hard ; quick, quick ! Pull for your 
lives ! Pull till the blood starts from the nostrils and the 
veins stand like whipcord upon the brow. Set the mast 
in the socket, hoist the sail ! Ah, ah, it is too late ; faster 
and faster you near the awful cataract, and then, shrieking, 
cursing, howling, praying, over you go. Thousands launch 
their barks in smooth water and realize no danger till on the 
verge of ruin, boasting all the while to the last, " When I 
find out that it is injuring me, then I will give it up." The 
power of this habit, I repeat, is fascinating, is deceptive, and 
men may go on arguing and coming to conclusions while on 
the way down to destruction. 

People do not act with common sense in this matter as 
they do in others. I read of a Yankee who went into an 
apothecary's shop in Boston. 

" Be you a drugger ? " he asked. 

" I am an apothecary, and I sell drugs." 

"Well, have you got any of this 'ere scentin' stuff that 
gals put on their handkerchiefs?" 

" Yes, I have." 

" Well, my sister Sal gave me ninepence, and told me to 
invest the whole amount in jest sich truck if I could git 
anything to suit; and I should like to smell round if you 
have no objection." 

" Certainly not," said the chemist, " here is some essence 
of peppermint." 

" O, that's royal," said the man. 

" Here is some essence of lemon." 

" That 's royaller." 

At last the apothecary took some strong spirits of harts- 
horn. " This," said he, " is a very subtle essence, and if you 
want to get the full virtue of it, the pure scent, you must 
draw in as hard as you can; a simple sniff will do no good." 



98 



A3" ASTONISHED COUNTRYMAN. 



"Hold od a minute," said the man, "till I git ready, and 
when I say, 'Now,' you let her rip." Then he shouted, 
"Now," and over he went. What did he do? Did he get 
up and smell again ? No, he had too much common sense ; 
as soon as he got on his feet he squared his arms and began 




THE RESULT OF SMELLING BOUND. 



to show fight, saying, " If you make me smell that 'tarnal 
everlastin' stuff again, I '11 make you smell fire and brim- 
stone." There was some common sense in that. Yet, in the 
matter of drinking, men go up to their old enemy and he 
knocks them over; up they get, and over they go again; 
and so it continues until they have hardly strength enough 
to get down on their hands and knees to kiss the foot of 



A TERRIBLE STORY. 99 

their foe, who with the next spurn sends the poor shriek- 
mo- spirit into eternity, infatuated by the influence of drink. 
Yet men boast that they will not "sign away their privi- 
leges." 

Drunkenness deludes its victims from the first glass down 
to false conclusions. "I don't intend to injure myself "is 
one. Dr. Condict told me the story of a young man who 
was a classmate of Daniel Webster, whose prospects at the 
time of his marriage to a gifted and beautiful woman could 
hardly have been exceeded in promise. He then drank in 
moderation; but the desire for stimulants grew upon him, 
and he began to drink to excess. His friends saw this, but 
did n't like to say anything to him about it lest they should 
" hurt his feelings." How foolish ! If we saw a man walk- 
ing on the edge of a precipice, should we abstain from cau- 
tioning him, because we did not want to "hurt his feelings?" 
The young man grew worse and worse, and his wife became 
exceedingly affected in her health, and even in her mind; but 
he saw nothing. 

At length Mr. Webster came to the city, and friends told 
him of the condition of his old classmate. " He is ruining; 
himself and his law practice ; the other day when an import- 
ant case was to be heard he was unfit to go into court." 
" But," said Webster, " has nothing been done ? Has no one 
spoken to him about it ? " They told him no, they wished to 
spare his feelings. "Feelings, sir ? I must go and see him." 
He went into the office, and when the young man rose to 
greet him, Webster gave him a look such as he only could 

give, and said, " Mr. , I tell you plainly, I see you are 

becoming a drunkard. Stop ; now sit down quietly, and 
let me tell you the whole truth." Then he told him of his 
declining practice, and the failing state of his wife's health : 
and the result was that the young man said, " Webster, you 

7 



100 



DRIVEN TO INSANITY. 



have opened my eyes, I will drink no more." After that he 
did not drink intoxicating drinks for months. He took 
his wife to watering-place after watering-place, and sur- 
rounded her with every luxury his increasing practice enabled 
him to afford ; but she did not seem to improve. One 
evening, as she was sitting with some ladies in Mrs. Condict's 
parlor, they noticed that her manner was strange. Presently 
the door opened, and her husband entered, with an eager 
smile upon his face, as if to announce some new provision for 

her comfort. The 
wife rose to meet 
him with the silly 
laugh of an idiot. 
"Oh, my God!" he 
exclaimed, "I could 
bear to see my wife 
a maniac ; but an 
idiot, an idiot ! — 
never," and he went 
away and drank him- 
self to death. Mrs. Condict told me, some time after his 
death, that on a subsequent visit to that afflicted household 
she found the wife sitting on the floor, playing with the chil- 
dren, quarrelling and fighting with them for their toys, a 
complete and hopeless idiot. 

You say, young man, you have no intention of doing 
yourself an injury. Let me tell you that the subtle influ- 
ences of drink upon you are injuring you more and more 
every day. A man is being damaged a long time before he 
knows it. Intoxicating liquor is fearfully deceptive in its 
nature. 

To return for a minute to the argument, " I can let it alone 
when I please." Suppose I lie upon the railway track ; some 




WEBSTER PLEADING WITH HIS CLASSMATE. 



A ROAD STREWN" WITH SPECTRES. 



101 






one cries out to me, " Get up, get up, the train is coming." 
" You mind your own business ; I 'm not fool enough to be 
run over, am I ? I can get up when I 've a mind to, and I 
can lie here as long as I please, can't I?" I boast of a 
power I positively possess, but I have no will to exercise the 
power, and the train comes thundering on and cuts me in 
two. What am I? I am a self-murderer. I had the power; 
I had the warning; I refused to exercise this power; and, 
when swift destruction came, 
the power was taken from me. 
Every man that 
dies a drunkard, 
dies a suicide. 
He had the pow- 
er to escape, and 
he had the warn- 
ing ; there is not 
a man who dares 
to say, " I have 
had no warn- 
ing." Stop one 
moment; stop 
and listen ; you 
can hear the " get up, get up, the tkain is coming." 
shrieks that come up from the vortex, — shrieks, piercing 
shrieks of despair from those who are sinking to rise no 
more. Your whole way is lined with spectres that are point- 
ing to the future of those who heedlessly argue their way 
down the fatal sliding scale. Therefore every man who dies 
a drunkard, dies a suicide. 

I heard a gentleman dispute that once. He said, " A man 
that is a suicide is one that destroys his life at once." I said 
to him, " Don't you consider a man a suicide if he shortens 







102 A PAINFUL SCENE. 

his life ten minutes ? " " No," said lie ; " I don't." At that 
time there was a man under sentence of death. " Now," said 
I, " suppose, ten minutes before that man is to be hung, he 
cuts his throat, what is he ? " " He is a suicide, certainly." 
" But he has only shortened his life ten minutes." I believe 
that every man who shortens his existence by the pursuit of 
gratification that is injurious to him is in a degree a destroyer 
of his own life. "I can, but I won't." You remember 
Samson was bound three times, and each time Delilah said to 
him, u The Philistines be upon thee, Samson," and three times 
he burst the thongs that bound him, and stood up again free. 
By-and-by he told her all his heart, and laid his head on her 
lap, and she called a man of her people, who sheared his 
locks. Then she said to him, " The Philistines be upon thee, 
Samson." What did he say? " I will go out and shake my- 
self, as at other times." He went out, but the power was 
gone, and in his helplessness they put out his eyes. 

God pity any man when he begins to feel the fetters of a 
habit gall him, who, when he goes out to burst his chains, 
finds the welded iron bands entering into his marrow, until 
he lifts his shackled hands to heaven and cries, " Who shall 
deliver me from the slavery of drunkenness ? " "I can, but I 
won't." The most painful scene I ever witnessed in my life 
was by the bedside of a man who said, " I would, but I can't." 
The difference between you and the poor sot is : you can, but 
you won't ; he would with all his heart, but he fears that he 
can't. You see a man standing before the bar or before the 
counter. His cry is, " Give me drink ; I must have it. I 
will give you my own hard earnings, but give me drink ! 
I will give you more than that. I married a wife ; I took her 
from her girlhood's home ; I promised to love her and cherish 
her, and protect her, and I have driven her out to work for 
me. Ah, ah ! I have stolen her wages, and I have brought 



A COLD DAY FOE PUSS. 



103 



theni to you ; I will give them to you if you will give me 
drink. More yet : I will give you the price of bread that I 
snatched from the parched lips of my famished child. More 
yet : I have some money in my hand ; I drove out my little 
child to lie and to cheat in the street, and I will give you 
that if you will give me drink. Yes, I have sold my child, 
body and soul, and I will give you the payment. More yet : 
I will give you my health ; I will give you my humanity. 

More yet: I will give you my 
hopes of heaven ; I will give you 
body and soul, but give me drink! " 
And there are men to-day barter- 
ing their birthright for a dram, and 
selling their heritage for drink. 

" When I find out it is injuring 
me, then I will give it up." But 
when will a man find out it is injur- 
ing him ? And when a man finds 
that out, that is the very time when 
he will not give it up. A man be- 
comes an intemperate man, and is 
deceived by supposing that no one 
knows anything about it. He has 
been indulging, and thinks no one knows it ! Why, the very 
children in the street know it. I remember hearing what a 
boy once said to his mother. His mother saw him thrashing 
the cat severely, when she said, " What is the matter with 
the cat?" " Three days ago," the boy said, "I got that cat 
under my arm, and I put my pen to her paw, and wrote 
4 Puss ' on the pledge, and now she has been breaking her 
pledge." "How do you know?" " I saw her come out of 
old Ramsey's rum-shop, licking her chops." Now, do you 
suppose you can go into the saloon, or into any one of* 




THE CAT'S PLEDGE. 



104 



EEJECTED AT THE ALTAR. 



those places of resort, at eleven o'clock in the morning, 
and come out wiping your lips, and no one know anything 
about it ? You may chew peppermint till you are sick, and 
pastils, and all sorts of things to take away the smell of the 




"no! you have deceived me." 

drink from your breath; but others know what you have 
been at. That odor of alcohol is wonderfully pungent. I 
heard (and I say this for the benefit of the ladies) of a 
young lady who was engaged to be married. Before she gave 
her consent, she made the young gentleman promise that he 
would drink no more intoxicating liquor. They stood up 
before the minister to be married. He turned his face to her 



ADAM'S WHISKEY JUG. 



105 



to give her his right hand, and she detected the smell of 
liquor in his breath. The minister said, " Wilt thou have 
this man to be thy wedded husband ? " Looking him right 
in the face, she said, " No ! " " Why, you came here for that 
purpose." " I did." Then she said to the young man, " You 
have deceived me ; you have told me a lie. You said you 
would not drink, and I smell it in your breath ; and the pros- 
pects for me, if I become your wife, are so dreadful, that my 
own safety and future happiness 
demand that I shall say no." 

You think no one knows it. It 
reminds me of a story of a time 
when we used to call ministers, 
" dominies ; " and in those days 
dominies liked whiskey. Perhaps .jjl//i 
they do not now, but they did [|| 
then. There was one woman who 
had a drunken husband, and his 
name was Adam. One day the 
dominie was to call, and the wife 
said, "Now, Adam, the whiskey- 
jug is empty, and you must go 
down to the store and get it filled ; " N0W > ADAM '' 

but do not drink any ; don't take the cork out and get to 
smelling it, for I know what the result will be ; and if you 
are a good man and a good, dear husband, Adam, and 
come back perfectly straight, when the dominie is gone 
I will give you a little whiskey." So off he went, but he 
was gone a long time. When he came back he was in a 
terrible state. His hat was smashed all to pieces, his trous- 
ers' knees broken across, his coat ripped, and he himself 
covered with mud, and in a beastly state. " Well, you have 
been and gone and done it ; you have, have n't you ? You 




106 



ADAM'S FALL. 



are a nice husband to break a woman's heart, you poor, 
miserable, drunken coot ; can't you come home sober ? Here 
comes the dominie. I would not for the world have him 
know that my husband got drunk; I would not have him 
find you in this state for the best farm in the county. Get 
into this closet, and draw yourself right up so that I can shut 
the door, and don't you make the least bit of noise ; if you 
do, I will be the death of you when 
you come out ; and if you are only per- 
fectly still till the dominie goes, per- 
haps I will give you a little more whis- 
key." So she crammed Adam into the 
closet just as the dominie came in at 
the door. 

" Good afternoon, madam." 
" Good afternoon, dominie." 
" Well," he said, " I have come to 
talk about religious subjects. You know 
how we are all suffering through Adam's 
fall ? " 

" Why, how did you find that out ? " 
"My dear sister," said the dominie, 
"I don't understand you. You know 
the whole world is suffering terribly 
from the effects of Adam's fall." 

" Oh, no ; it is not so bad as that, and I have seen him 
far worse." 

"Really, my dear sister, I don't understand you; I tell 
you that for all generations to come the world will groan 
through the effects of Adam's fall." 

" Now," says she, " dominie, you need not tell me another 
word. I know he has torn his trousers, and I know he has 
split his coat, and I know he has smashed a new hat all to 




ADAM'S RETURN. 



STARTING ON THE DOWNWARD PATH. 



107 



pieces, and I know he is all covered with mud. Adam, you 
can come out now ; the dominie has found it all out. He 
knows it ! " Yes ; everybody knows it ; and suppose they 
did not, does it depend on their knowledge whether you are 
ruined or not? 

Now let me give you another fact. People say I have no 
argument ; that I do not use logic. Well, I draw my argu- 
ments from facts, and illustrate my arguments by facts. 
I can speak from a personal knowledge of 
the facts in the following incident ; for I 
know one of 
the parties : 
A young man 
went through 
college with 
the highest 
honor; his 
record and 
character 
were clean 
and pure. 
About the 
time he grad- 
uated he met with a great misfortune in having a legacy 
left him of forty thousand dollars. " Now," he said, " before 
I buckle down to life's work, I will see the world." And he 
did so. He was of a nervous, susceptible temperament ; he 
boarded in one of the best hotels, and commenced drinking. 
I will not follow his course. After he had been there some 
time, the landlord said to him, " Look here, you and I know 
each other ; we are men of the world, and it is always busi- 
ness before friendship. Now, you know the kind of house 
I mean to keep. I have lady boarders with me, and they 




adam's exit from the closet. 



108 LOWER AXD LOWER. 

may be fastidious ; but that has nothing to do with it. 
They complain of your coming in late at night and mak- 
ing a noise. That will not do ; I think you had better 
find some other quarters. We are friends just the same as 
ever, but I think it would be better for us both if you shift 
your quarters." And he did. Now, young men, where did 
he go ? Did he go to a more respectable house ? No ; he 
went to a less respectable house. Every step a man takes in 
this course is down, never up ; never, never ! He went where 
he could make a little more noise without troubling any- 
one. When he was too noisy for that house, they ordered 
him away. 

He went to a lower and a lower and a lower place, every 
step still lower. Eight years passed away. He was seated 
in a grog-shop, — well, I can hardly describe it, — it was a 
place where they kept bunks for men to sleep off the drink, 
and where a certain kind of food called "all-sorts soup" 
was provided for them. It was a most wretched place. He 
sat on a dilapidated chair, destitute of linen, with a wretched 
coat buttoned close up to his neck ; a greasy cap lay on his 
forehead ; his hair, brown and wavy, was yet rich and glossy; 
one foot was naked, the other was thrust into an old India- 
rubber shoe. He sat there with his feet stretched out, his 
arms folded, asleep and snoring. Several of the wretched 
victims of this vice were seated around the room. The 
landlord came in. 

" Look here ! wake up here ! What are you doing here ? 
Wake up ! " 

" What are you talking to me in this way for ? " 

"I will let you know what I talk in this way for; get out 
of my house ! " 

"What do you mean ?" 

" I won't have you hanging round here any longer ; you 
have become a complete nuisance; get out with you!" 



"TOM, OLD FELLOW, IS THIS YOU?" 109 

" What do you talk to me in this way for ? " 

" I will let you know what I mean if you don't get out." 

" Don't lay your hand on me. I tell you, sir, look out 
before you arouse the devil in me. Don't touch me. What 
do you talk to me in this way for? When I first came 
to your house you treated me civilly; you took my money 
for liquor and for treating others; you gave me the best 
bunk in your house, and you have often put me to bed 
when I was drunk. What do you talk to me in this way for, 
now?" 

"What do I talk to you in this way for ? Because you are 
not the same man you were when you first came here." 

"I am not the same man, am I? That is true. Don't lay 
your hand on me, I say. He says I am not the same man 
I was when I first came to his house. Now, I will go ; you 
need not put me out ; I will go. He says I am not the same 
man I was; I don't look like it, and I don't feel like it. 
Look at me, and see what you and such as you have made 
me. I remember when I delivered the salutatory to my 
class, and now I am a nuisance. Now I will go. Good-by." 

He staggered forth and fell in the gutter. They picked 
him up and brought him back to the house. The man would 
not allow him to be brought in, so they put him in a cellar 
on a heap of straw. They found out who he was, and sent 
for an old college classmate who was practising as a lawyer 
in that city. He came to him and said : — 

"Why, Tom, old fellow, is this you?" 

"Yes, all there is left of me." 

" This is bad business, Tom." 

" Yes, as bad as it could be." 

" Don't say that, old fellow ; I have come to get you up 
and take care of you. I am not going to leave you till I get 
you on your feet again." 



110 THE DEATH OF TOM. 

" No, it is too late ; I shall never stand on my feet again ; 
I shall die where I lie. He says I am not the same man I 
was, and I will die here ; I want to die here ; I have no 
hope." • 

"Why, Tom, don't talk like that, old fellow. Don't you 
remember the good old times ? " 

" Yes ; I remember them." 

" Well, now, just cheer up." 

" I cannot cheer up. Jem, Jem, will you kiss me ? " 

The friend turned and pressed his lips to the bloated face 
of the dying man, who then said, " It is getting dark." 

" But, Tom, Tom, dear fellow, remember Him who said, 
* Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden.' ' 

" Too late, Jem. Don't leave me ; don't leave me ! Oh, 
it is getting dark ; it is getting dark.". Straightening himself 
up, while convulsions shook his frame, he said, " This is the 
last act of the play that is played out," and he fell back 
dead. Ah ! my friends, it is an awful risk to take a wrong 
direction. 

They tell us that eight miles from the earth nothing can 
live. There is death to all animal life only eight miles above 
us. Travel eight miles in this direction or that, you come to 
home, and life, and peace, and love, and happiness. In that 
direction, death ! It does not matter what the distance is, 
but it is the direction you take that will make or mar you. 
Men say that, when they find drink is injuring them, then 
they will give it up. Young men, do you know what the 
appetite for drink is ? God forbid you ever should know by 
your own experience. 



PS 

reJ5 ' 




CHAPTER III. 

FRIEND OR FOE ? — THE DIVIDING LINE — WHERE DO YOU 
STAND? — SLAVES OF FASHION — LUDICROUS INCIDENTS. 

The Word "But" — Popping the Question — Anecdote of Dr. Lawson — A 
Slim Congregation — A Sermon That Was "Too Personal" — How 
Mrs. Remington Stood It — A Duel in the Dark — Retreating Up the 
Chimney — A Surprise to Both Parties — Giving a Reason — Both Sides of 
the Question — "Three Cheers for Elder Gray" — The Bank Cashier's 
Story — The Reason Why — Comical Excuses for Drinking — Grounds 
for Suspicion — Letting Down the Bars — An Ugly Threat — Catching 
the Measles — Drinking in Society — Sipping in "Style" — Fashionable 
Dissipation — Silly Customs — A Ludicrous Picture — The Dutchman and 
His Lost "Poy" — Story of the Tempted Negro — A Coveted Pair of 
Boots — " The Devil Says Take 'Em"- Queer Ideas of Faith — " Good- 
ness Gracious ! Has It Come to That ? " — Funny Incidents — Forward — 
God Speed the Right. 



F a man has anything to say 
against the temperance 
movement, let him come 
boldly forward and state it. 
We have a right to demand 
of opposers their reasons for 
opposition. I cannot under- 
stand the position of that 
man who will say to us, as many 
men do say, " Yours is a good cause, 
you are doing a great deal of good, 
but, but—." That word "but" 
stands in the way of a great many good enterprises. " But " 
blocks more good intentions towards the total abstinence 
movement than any other word. " It is a good cause ; 
drunkenness is an evil, and I wish you well, but — ." Now. 

113 




114 THAT LITTLE WORD "BUT." 

what is the use of all this? Does it help us to be told that 
our cause is a good one, and that they wish us well, 
"but — ?" Young gentleman, what would you think if, 
when you had paid your addresses to a young lady, had 
screwed your courage up to the point of popping the impor- 
tant question, and as yo\x stood there in eager expectation to 
hear the affirmative reply, she were to say : " Well, my 
opinion of you is a very high one ; I have regarded you with 
a great deal of interest ; and my father thinks that your char- 
acter is irreproachable, that your temper is good, and your 
position in society is all that I could expect. I wish to 
return to you my grateful acknowledgments for having 
selected me as the object of your affection, and I really 
feel as if I could return the love you have confessed for 
me, but — ." Now, all these expressions of esteem, admi- 
ration and respect, only make the sting felt more deeply. I 
positively would rather hear a man say, " I don't believe in 
your principles, and I am ready to give reasons for it," than to 
hear him say, " It is a good cause, you are doing a great deal 
of good," and so on. We do not desire to show that you 
are wrong, but that we are right. 

I am reminded of a story told of the late Dr. Lawson, of 
Selkirkc Walking to Fala on one occasion to assist at the 
sacrament, he was overtaken by a snowstorm, and sought 
shelter in a house by the roadside. The good wife was a bust- 
ling, clever, kind-hearted woman, and, as the storm did not 
abate with the close of day, she said to the Doctor, supposing 
from his simple appearance that he was some plain country- 
man, " Ye seem tae be clean, and, gin ye like, ye can bide tae 
the mornin'." Supper was prepared, and before retiring to 
rest the family were gathered for worship. If the husband 
was the " head " of the house, the wife at least seemed to be 
the "neck" of it, for she read the chapter and led the devo- 



A SLIM CO^GEEGATION. 



115 



tional part of the service. In the morning the Doctor took 
his departure ; and what was the good woman's surprise, on 
attending church that day, to see the stranger she had lodged 
ascend the pulpit and " address the table ! " On the Tues- 
day following, as the Doctor made his way home, he called 
at the house that had sheltered him, and, addressing the 
mistress, said, "I could not pass the door without again 
thankin' you for your kind- 
ness to a stranger; but, oh, 
woman, I lik'd your pray- 
ers far better than your 
brose." * 

We ask you to define 
your position. If you do 
not, it will be defined for 
you in a way you do not 
expect. One rainy day a 
man went into church and 
found no one there but the 
minister. " Well," said the 
minister, "what am I to 
do ? " " Why, preach, to 
be sure ! I pay the minister-tax." "You want me to preach 
a sermon, do you? " " Of course, I came on purpose to hear 
one." " Then take a seat ; there 's plenty of room." He 
preached a pithy, close, searching sermon, and hit his auditor 
hard. On going home, he was asked how he liked the 
sermon. " Oh, I liked it well enough, but it was too personal." 
People sometimes say, "Were you at the meeting last night?" 
"Yes." "Did you hear Mr. So-and-So?" "Yes." "Did 
you notice that gentleman who sat on the platform, how 
awfully he got it ? " I was once told of a certain man who 




TOO PERSONAL. 



* A Scotch dish, — a preparation of oatmeal 



116 A DUEL IN THE DAKK. 

had gained the reputation of not being very particular in 
telling the truth ; in fact, he was a notorious liar. The min- 
ister of the place was requested to preach a sermon against 
the sin of lying. After the sermon — a pretty strong one 
— had been delivered, this man was asked how he liked it. 
"Like it? Why, it wAs first-rate, admirable, just the thing 




A SURPRISE TO BOTH DUELLISTS. 



that's wanted. I think we ought to raise our minister's 
salary. I really did enjoy it, but I could n't help wondering 
how Mrs. Remington stood it." 

Two men were fighting a duel in a very dark room. One 
of them, who was a very brave man and did not want to 
shoot, groped all round the room, seeking for some con- 
venient place to fire his pistol without the risk of hurting 
his adversary. At last he felt himself near the chimney, 
which he thought was just the place for his purpose, so 
he fired up the chimney, and down tumbled the other man. 



BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION. 117 

A great many people think themselves safe up the chimney. 
Our teetotal gun is one which will shoot round the corner. 
It so happens that when anything is said, fitted to hit, every 
one lays it all on somebody else. If what we say in defence 
of our cause is the truth, and any man is hurt by it, the 
Lord help him to get his hurt healed. 

There are only two sides to this question, and no man can 
be on both sides at the same time. Many say it is a good 
cause, and doing much good, and yet throw cold water on 
our efforts. We like cold water well enough, but do not like 
it dashed about us in this indiscriminate manner. I wish 
such individuals would define their position. A gentleman 
in Massachusetts, conversing with me at one time on differ- 
ent topics, at length spoke of temperance. "I wish you all 
success," said he ; "I believe the cause to be a good one, and 
likely to confer great and important benefits on society." 
" Have you signed the pledge ? " said I. " Hem — no — no." 
Said I, " Why not ? " Had he said, " Because I believe it to 
be wrong," I would have been satisfied; but he gave no 
reason. A man said to me at another place, " I shan't sign 
your pledge." " Why ? " " Because I love liquor." u You 
are an honest man, give me your hand. I like you ; you have 
given me a reason which is an honest one, and I believe you." 
If a man says, " I love liquor and mean to drink," that is a 
satisfactory reason ; it is enough, you do not belong to us. 

We believe that total abstinence from all that can intoxi- 
cate is lawful, is expedient ; and that it is good " neither to 
eat flesh, nor drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother 
stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." We believe it 
is our duty to adopt the principle on these grounds, and there 
remains only the opposite. Will you adopt it, then? One 
gentleman says, "I shan't, because I sell liquor, and mean 
to do it." Well, sir, go over there and take your place. 



118 THE DIVIDING LINE. 

Another says, " I shan't sign the pledge." You shan't, why 
not ? " Oh, I dislike drunkenness as much as you do, and 
am much opposed to it ; but the nature of my business leads 
me into society, and I occasionally take a social glass." Very 
well, sir, that is enough ; go over there. A lady says, " I 
can't." Why not? "Oh, I hate drunkenness; I despise it; 
still I can't come to the conclusion to abolish wine entirely. 
You know there are wedding parties and occasions — ." That 
is enough, go over there. Now, where are you going to 
place a poor, wretched, miserable drunkard? With a face 
woefully debauched, he comes reeling up. "I shan't." 
Why not ? " Down with all your total abstinence, I say." 
That is enough, only go over there with the others. We 
stand on the ground of total abstinence, and you stand 
against us. That is the line of division. 

Now, if we are right, if we convince you that we are, will 
you help us ? If, on the contrary, you can show us that we 
are all wrong, and that we have no right to pray and labor 
for the advancement of the cause, I, for one, will tear my 
pledge in pieces, and join with you. But while there are 
those who bitterly oppose us, I do not believe there is one 
reputable person in all this land who would be so inhuman 
as to willingly lift a finger, if, by that simple act, he could 
bring the temperance cause to naught; nor one who would 
willingly lift a finger, if, by so doing, he could send the drunk- 
ards redeemed by this movement back to a life of wretched- 
ness and woe, undoing at once all the good our cause has con- 
ferred upon them. Why ? Because you know in your hearts 
that abstinence has done a good work, and will yet do more. 
And we look forward with hearts full of gratitude to God, 
believing that brighter days are dawning. The drinking 
customs of society will yet receive their death-blow, and 
they will be buried with no hope of resurrection. 



"HOORAY FOR ELDER GRAY!" 119 

If men refuse to define their position, it will be denned 
for them, and sometimes in a way they will not relish. Many 
a man has been driven to take different ground by his posi- 
tion being defined for him. On the borders of Lake Ontario 
lived a minister named Gray. Those who knew him gen- 
erally designated him by the title of Elder Gray. He was 
much opposed to the total abstinence movement, sometimes 
declaring it to be unscriptural, and objecting to it for various 
other reasons. He went at one time to a temperance meet- 
ing, a large one, and the manager of it desired him to open the 
meeting with prayer. Elder Gray, however, would not pray, 
but rose and stated that he had come there to oppose them, 
to find out the weakness of their position, and that he would 
watch them, believing that their position was unscriptural. 
After he had sat down, a noted toper of the place rose, and, 
taking his almost crownless hat in his hand, he waved it 
round his head, exclaiming, " Hooray for Elder Gray ! Three 
cheers for Elder Gray ! " Here the position of the minister 
was defined for him. Elder Gray was extremely offended at 
this, and became quite indignant. " Sit down, I tell you," 
he cried, addressing the man who spoke. Then, throwing 
suspicious glances at the managers and looking displeased, he 
said, " I don't understand this." Everybody else understood 
it. " Have you a pledge here ? " he at last interrogated. 
" Yes," said they ; and, on its being handed to him, he wrote 
his name on it. Then he prayed, and it was a wonderful 
prayer for the temperance movement. This was after he saw 
his position defined for him, saw himself, a minister, occupy- 
ing such a position, and heard an intoxicated man who was 
witness to his conduct exclaiming, " Three cheers for Elder 
Gray ! " Thus, if men do not define their position, they 
sometimes have it defined for them. 

A gentleman, the cashier of a bank, once said to me : " I 



120 THE CASHIER'S STORY. 

was a good temperance man ; I drank wine and the lighter 
drinks, but I opposed the use of ardent spirits, and thought 
I was a very benevolent man indeed. I used to talk on tem- 
perance, and go home and take a glass of wine to cheer me 
up. A man living opposite to me was in the habit of getting 
drunk, and when drunk he was very abusive ; and he had 
been in jail for it several times. However, I thought I would 
endeavor to reform him. So I said, 'Why don't you join 
our temperance society ? ' 

"'Join what?' 

" ' Our temperance society.' 

" ' Oh, well, I could be just as good a temperance man as 
you are, and as drunk as a fool every night of my life.' 

" ' Why, how so ? ' 

" ' You drink wine, don't you ?' 

"'Yes, I do.' 

" ' Well, if I could afford it, I would ; I drink whiskey ; 
whiskey is my wine, and wine is your whiskey.' To use his 
own expression, ' You drink for the fuddle, and I drink for 
the fuddle ; you are satisfied with a little, I am not satisfied 
unless I get a good deal ; if I drink one glass, I must have 
another ; you can drink one glass of wine and go about your 
business, I can't. If I were as well off as you, I might have 
all my arrangements about me, and be as good a temperance 
man as you are.' 

" ' But then our positions are different ; you had better sign 
the pledge that you will not drink anything that intoxicates.' 

"'Will you?' 

" ' Well, in my case, you know, it is not at all necessary.' 

" ' Ugh ! I knew you would n't ; you come to me and ask 

me to do what you won't do yourself. If I sign the pledge, 

I must make a sacrifice ; you give up nothing ; you can sign 

the pledge and drink wine and the lighter drinks, but I can't 



INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE. 121 

afford it ; don't you think you are a very benevolent man to 
talk to me in that way ? ' 

"'Well, if I sign the pledge that I will not drink any 
intoxicating liquor at all, will you ? ' 

" 4 Yes, I will ; I will dare you to do it ? ' 

" We went into the bank ; I wrote a pledge, and both of 
us signed it. 4 Now, don't break it without coming to the 
bank to tell me that you are going to break it, and then we 
can both break it together.' I saw him two or three days 
afterwards, and said to him, ' How do you get along ? ' ' Oh,' 
said he, ' I do not know how you get along, Mr. Segur, but 
it is almost death to me ; but I am going to stick to it.' 
And that is the way I saved him. I said to myself, ; If the 
other method will not save him, I will adopt that which will.' ,: 
And I say that no man can exert an influence to save his 
brother unless he adopts the principle which he asks his 
brother to adopt. 

A minister of the gospel said to me : " I took my brother 
with me to a temperance meeting, and the result was, he 
signed the pledge and is now a Christian man. But he said 
to me : 4 Brother, if you had asked me to go to that meeting 
and had not been an abstainer yourself, had not shown such 
a respect for the principles there advocated as to adopt them, 
instead of signing the pledge I should have laughed at the 
whole matter ; but when you asked me to go to that meeting 
I knew you respected the principles that were advocated 
there, and adopted them yourself ; and when I sat by your 
side and looked at you, I was convinced that you were right, 
and I felt that I could not possibly resist, so I gave my name 
and my influence.' " 

The vicar of a certain parish in Kent once said : " I will 
tell you why I am an abstainer. I had no influence for good 
over the drunkards in my parish until I signed the pledge ; 



122 



A MINISTER'S TESTIMONY. 



for it was no use to say to them, ' Go and join the temperance 
society ; go among the teetotalers and sign the pledge.' I once 
saw one of my parishioners very much intoxicated, and I told 
him that I was very much ashamed to see him in that con- 
dition, a nuisance to himself and a disgrace to the parish. 
'Now,' said I, 'why don't you 7r.\\ x 

do as I used to do?' He 
looked at me, and said, 'You 
kept your wine in your cellar, 
and took it regular every day. 
I takes mine when I gets my 
wages, once a fortnight, and 
then perhaps I gets drunk.' 
' But why don't you do as I do 
now,' said I; 'I don't drink 
wine at all.' 'Not at all, sir?' 
'No, I drink no intoxicating 
liquor.' ' No ? have you signed 
the pledge ? ' ' Yes, I have.' 
4 Well, sir, if you can give up 
your wine and your spirits, with 
all the company you have, I think 
I can give up my beer, and I 
will,' and he signed the pledge." 

Now for a moment let us look at some of the reasons given 
for drinking, or some of the excuses for taking a glass. We 
total abstainers have no excuse or apology to offer for our 
position of antagonism to the drink. 

A man once rose in a meeting which I held and said, "I 
will sign the pledge if you will let me have a little drop when I 
want it as a medicine." When a man prescribes for sickness so 
long in advance, I look at him with suspicion. I said, "When 
the doctor prescribes it you may take it." " But," said he, 




THE MAN WHO DRINKS BECAUSE 
HE IS COLD. 



COMICAL EXCUSES FOR DRINKING. 



123 



" I don't want to go to the doctor every time I am sick ; I 
want to take a little when I feel I need it ; if you will let me 
do that I will join the society, because I think you are doing 
a great work." Anyone would give us his name in that way, 
for it would cost him nothing. " When I feel I need it ! " 
" It is very cold to-day, I shiver from head to foot ; I must 
have a little something because it is so cold, and I need it." Or, 
" It is very hot to-day ; dear me ! such weather as this swelters 

a man to death; I 
must have something 
to keep me up in such 
hot weather; I need 
it." Another man 
drinks a little in sum- 
mer-time because 
there are insects in 
the water, and spirits 
kill them. Another 
thinks he needs some^ 
thing in winter-time 
because it is so hurtful to drink cold water. Another man is 
very ill ; for eighteen years he has taken the same remedy, 
and he will go and try a little more of it. Another is toler- 
ably well, but the weather-glass is falling, and the last time 
the wind was in that quarter it gave him a terrible pain ; he 
needs something as a preventive, and he will try it once 
more. This reminds me of the man who wanted some brandy 
and water. " I must have it this morning," he said, "because 
I am so thirsty, but what makes me thirsty I do not know, 
unless it is that I am going to have some salt fish for dinner." 
One man said he would sign the pledge if they would let him 
drink when they washed sheep, that being usually done only 
once a year. He took the pledge accordingly, and ob- 




THE MAN WHO DRINKS BECAUSE HE IS HOT. 



124 RIDICULOUS CUSTOMS. 

tained a sheep which he kept in his barn and washed regu- 
larly four times a day all the year round, till he washed the 
poor creature nearly to death. I heard a man say that 
because he heard a sentiment advanced at a temperance 
meeting that he did not like, he went home and began 
drinking again. That was just as silly as the boy that said, 
" Mother, if you don't give me a penny, I know another boy 
that 's got the measles, and I '11 go and catch 'em." We have 
to meet with many such contemptible excuses for drinking. 

One obstacle to our success is the tenacity with which 
some persons cling to the fashionable drinking customs. I 
know but little of the custom of persons at table " taking 
wine together," though I know enough to be aware of what 
it is. It is a silly custom. You smile at a lady and ask her 
to take wine. She smiles and bows. The waiter then fills her 
glass and fills yours. Then you take the wineglass in your 
hand, and smile. You must smile. Even if you have the 
toothache very badly, you must smile. It may be an agoniz- 
ing smile, but you must smile. Then she smiles and bows and 
sips, and you smile and bow and sip, then both smile and bow 
together, and it is all over. Now suppose I should ask the 
lady, "May I take a small piece of bread and butter with you?" 
She bows and smiles. The waiter gives her a piece of bread 
and butter, and I take a piece ; and she takes her piece of 
bread and butter, and smiles and bows and bites ; I do the 
same, and while we both masticate, we smile and bow to- 
gether. It would be perfectly ridiculous, but not more so 
than this custom of drinking and bowing and smiling over a 
glass of wine, and far less injurious. It does not, and cannot, 
hurt a man or woman to eat a small piece of bread and butter, 
but it may do a vast deal of harm to take a glass of wine. 
I do not say it will, but it may. There is a risk. 

But we want men who are decided on this subject; men 



A COVETED PAIR OF BOOTS. 



125 



who know where they are. I remember once hearing of a 

Dutchman who lost his boy. He said : " I lost my poy, and I 

could not find him novheres, never. He runned avay, and I 

vent after him, and I looks and looks all rount, and finds him 

on de curbstone, and I feels very pad. I dells him to go home 

along mit his fader, and he say he vould. I dinks to mineself, 

4 1 got dat poy now.' I 

look at him, and he look 

at me, and den I cry, and 

he cry, and we bote cry. 

And den I dell him to 

stood up, and he stood 

up. And I look him 

right in de face, and he 

look me right in de face, 

and I put my arms rount his 

neck, and — it vas not him." 

If this course of so-called 
moderate drinking goes on, 
then the ranks o r he drunk- 
ards will be filled. And what 
shall we do? That is the ques- 
tion. Fight the drink ! Fight 
it, fight it wherever we find 
it, fight it in the social circle, 
fight it in the dram-shop, 
fight it at home, and fight it abroad. No compromise ! 
I am not one of those who believe in compromises. These 
compromises are very curious things. I once heard of a 
negro who was talking with another negro about his expe- 
rience, and he said, "Oh, I'm awfully tempted, dreffully 
tempted." " Well, how are you tempted ? " " Oh, I 'm tempted 
to steal, dar 's where I 'm tempted — tempted to steal, can't 




DE DEBBIL SAYS 'TAKE 'EM. 5 



126 



A "FEARFUL EXAMPLE.' 



resist. Why, I went into a boot and shoe store de odder day. 
Dere was a handsome pair of boots ; handsomest pair of boots 
I eber saw in my life. Dem was bery expensive boots, dem 
was ; de best boots I eber set my eyes on. An' I wanted 'em. 
De debbil says, 'Take 'em.' De Lawd says, 'Leave 'em 
alone.' Now what was I going to do ? I wanted dem boots. 
Debbil says, ' Take 'em,' and de Lawd says, ' Let 'em alone.' 

Dat 's two to 
one ; we is in 
cl'ar majority, 
an' I don't 
know what to 
do. So I jes' 
made a compro- 
mise wid de 
Lawd, an' took 
a cheap pair of 
shoes off anoder 
shelf, and walk 
off wid 'em." 

Some of these 
people who re- 
gard them- 
selves as advo- 
cates of the cause do more harm than good. I remember 
reading a story of a man who was drunk, and a gentleman 
came to him and said, "What are you doing?" "Doing? 
Well, that's just what I'm doing." "No, but what are you 
about ? " " What am I about ? That 's just exactly what I 
am about." "But what is your business?" "Business? 
I 'm in the temperance business." " In the temperance busi- 
ness. Why, how in the world do you make that out ? " 
" Why look here : you see I 've got a brother, and he 's a 




THE "FEARFUL EXAMPLE. 



PEOPLE HARD TO PLEASE. 127 

temperance lecturer, and I go along with him as the fearful 
example of the evils of intemperance." I do not know but 
that man was honest, for a man will think anything almost, 
when he is in the habit of drinking. 

Our method is simple, it is lawful, and it is expedient, when 
we adopt it for the sake of others. And I ask, if a principle 
is worth adopting for the sake of example to save others, is it 
not worth adopting for its own sake? 

We need, and ask for, your influence. Many persons are 
afflicted with a great deal of modesty, and when asked to sign 
the pledge, say, " I don't know that I have any particular in- 
fluence. " Such persons would not be pleased if I should say 
they had no particular influence. I once made a man very 
angry who said, " I don't know that I have any particular in- 
fluence." I said, " I don't know that you have." He was 
quite vexed because I agreed with him. m He was like the man 
that stood up in a church meeting and said that he had not 
been as good a man as he ought to have been, and that he 
had cheated and over-reached people ; he would now confess 
and declare that it should not be so any more. A friend 
rose and said, " I am very glad our brother has confessed 
and repented, for I can testify to the truth of every word 
he has said." "It is false," was the immediate reply. 

Many excuse themselves by under-rating their own ability 
or influence, asking, " What can I do ? If I should give up 
my position in this matter for you, what good can I do ? " 
When that boy went to hear Jesus Christ preach, we may say 
that he went as we would go nowadays to a camp-meeting. 
His mother put him up a little lunch, five small barley loaves 
and a few fishes. Five thousand hungry folks were gathered 
there ; they came to the boy for his loaves and fishes. He 
might have said, " They are only enough for myself. Mother 
put them up for my lunch. I cannot give up my cakes. It 



128 



QUEER IDEAS OF FAITH. 



would not be of any use if I did." But no, he did not say 
this ; he gave up his cakes. And — what ? The Master 
blessed them, and the five thousand were fed, and there were 
twelve basketsful left. Now, I say to you, man or woman, 
child or youth, bring your five barley cakes and ask the Mas- 
ter to bless them, and you will see the result ; for it is the 
small things that He makes mighty, through His power, 
to the overturning of things 
that are great. All we need 
is faith, and our work will 
then be faith in action. 

Some people have curious 
ideas about faith. A lady in 
Edinburgh said to me : " There," 
pointing to him, "is a boy who 
illustrates some people's ideas of 
faith. As we were going from 
Edinburgh to Dunfermline, the ves- 
sel struck a rock and began to set- 
tle. A tug pushed out from the 
shore to take off the passengers, 
and my boy said, ' Oh, mamma, we 
are all going to drown.' ' My dar- 
ling, have I not always told you to 
trust in Providence ? ' ' Yes, mamma, and I will trust in 
Providence as quick as ever I get into that boat.' ' Once, 
when a vessel was in danger, a lady said to the captain, 
"Captain, are we in any danger?" "Yes, ma'am, there is 
nothing left for us now but to trust in Providence." And 
she said, " Goodness gracious, has it come to that ? " What 
strange ideas people have of Providence ! A washerwoman, 
whose little shanty was burnt down, as she stood before the 
ruin, shut her fist and said, " You see if I don't work on 




A DKEADFUL THREAT. 



WHAT IS FAITH? 129 

Sundays to pay for that," just as if the Lord had brought 
down her shanty, and she would get satisfaction by break- 
ing one of His commandments. 

Men have strange ideas of God's dealings with us, and of 
faith in Him. What is faith ? To walk right on to the edge 
of the precipice, and then stop ? No, walk on ! What, set 
my feet upon nothing ? Yes, upon nothing, if it is in the 
path of duty ; boldly set your feet on nothing, and a solid 
rock, firm as the everlasting hills, shall meet your feet at 
every step you take in the path of duty, only do it unwaver- 
ingly and in faith. What we have to do is to settle the point 
that we are right ; and then onward. 

You remember, when the children of Israel went out of 
Egypt, when they were a band of escaped fugitives. Their 
ranks were encumbered with many women and children, and 
their mighty, but meek, leader was armed only with a rod. 
Here come the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh, treading 
on their very shadow. A pillar of fire went before the 
Israelites by night, and a pillar of cloud by day ; and they 
marched till they came to the shores of the Red Sea, and 
then — what? Read the magnificent narrative. And the 
Lord God said unto Moses from out of the cloud, "Speak 
to the children of Israel that they go forward." That 
was the only command. How can they go forward ? There 
is no other command for them ; but to Moses came these 
words : " Stretch forth thy rod," and the way opened. God 
never yet gave us a duty to do but he opened the way for 
us when we were ready to do it. He never yet gave an 
impossible command. So Moses stretched forth his rod and 
the water stood in heaps. Tramp, tramp, tramp went the three 
millions over the bed of the sea, and their enemies came 
in after them in the night-time. Now — what ? " Forward ! " 
"But our enemies are in the rear." "Forzvard/" "Yes, 



130 GOD SPEED THE EIGHT. 

but before us is, — we kuow not what, — and the waters are 
on either side." " Forward ! " " Yes, but we can feel the 
very breath of the horses upon our necks, and hear the 
chariot wheels grind in the shingle as they pursue us." 
"Forward!" "Yes, but we must defend our wives and 
little ones." " Forward ! " And the pillar that went before 
them passed over and stood in their rear. It was light unto 
them, it was darkness to their enemies ; " and they came not 
near each other all the night." Those who had obeyed the 
command, " forward ! " stood on the other side, and then 
the Lord God looked out from the pillar of fire, and troubled 
the Egyptians, and brake their chariot wheels. Those who 
had obeyed the command, " forward ! " saw the wrecks of 
chariots, and the carcasses of the horses, and the bodies of 
men strewing the strand. Let us settle the question, " Am I 
right ? " And then, shoulder to shoulder, march on, our 
motto, "Excelsior;" our hope, that there is a better day 
coming ; and our prayer, " God speed the right." 



CHAPTER IV. 

BLUNDERS, COMICAL, CURIOUS, SERIOUS, AND CRIMINAL, 
AND PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEM — FUNNY STORIES. 

Various Sources of Blunders — Heading a Boy in a Barrel — Absent-minded 
People — Anecdote of Dr. Duncan — Amusing Incidents — Ministerial 
Blunders — The Pibroch and the Slogan — The " Coisoned Pup" — 
Laughable Mistakes — Blunders of the Past — Blunders of Society — Irish 
Bulls — Killing a Man Twice— The "Red Cow" — Common Errors — 
Misuse of Words — Blunders in Language — A Musician with Carved 
Legs — Religious Horses — Human Parasites — The Curse of Mormonism — 
Serious Blunders — Sowing Dragons' Teeth — Office Seekers — How to 
Secure Honest Legislation — Curious Blunders in Literature — Sacrificing 
Sense to Rhyme — The Lawyer and the Sailor — Neatly Caught — Funny 
Blunders — A Viper with Feet — " No. 45, Stick No Bills "— " Let Her 
Drop" — Moulting Angels — Take Your Soundings. 




Y the term " blunders " I em- 
brace a wide range of mean- 
ing: errors, mistakes, bulls, 
and the like, — an error being 
a departure or deviation from 
that which is right ; mistake, 
the taking of one thing for 
another; a blunder being a mistake 
or error of the grossest kind, and 
generally considered blamable, usu- 
ally exposing a person to shame or 
ridicule ; while a bull is simply a 
verbal blunder, containing a laughable incongruity of ideas. 
One source of blunders is the failure to fasten the mind on the 
business which is immediately in hand. The mechanic spoils 
his work by thinking of something else. A cooper puts his 

131 



132 AMUSING INCIDENTS. 

son inside the barrel to hold up the head, and finds, when he 
has finished, that his boy is headed in the barrel, with no way 
of escape but through the bung-hole, — a foolish blunder. 
A dentist may extract the wrong tooth, — a stupid blunder. 
A physician may prescribe the wrong medicine, or a druggist 
may put up the wrong prescription, — criminal blunders. 
Another source is chronic, permanent, and habitual absent- 
mindedness. Dr. Duncan of Edinburgh, while going to a 
meeting, took out his paper of snuff; the wind blew; he 
turned to leeward to take his pinch, forgot that he had 
turned, walked straight away from the meeting, and failed to 
fulfil his engagement. Another eminent Scotch divine, Dr. 
Lawson, was constantly blundering from this cause. He was 
often so absorbed in his studies as to confound the realities 
of life with his imagination. Once, he left his lecture-room 
taking with him a student's hat instead of his own book 
which he was to carry home. Another time he was leaving 
the house with a lady's bonnet on his head, the bonnet having 
been left hanging on a peg where his own hat ought to have 
been. Once, when walking in a heavy shower, a friend 
loaned him an umbrella, which he carefully put under his 
coat, through fear of wetting it. On one occasion, while in 
his study, intent on his books, the servant rushed in, exclaim- 
ing, " Sir, sir, the house is on fire ! " The Doctor did not 
intermit his studies for a moment, but simply said, " Go and 
tell your mistress. I have no charge of household matters, 
so do not disturb me." The celebrated Neander would start 
from his house to his lecture in his night-gown, only to be 
brought* back by his sister. Once, having put one foot in 
the gutter, he hobbled along the whole length of the street, 
and, as soon as he reached home, hastily sent for the doc- 
tor to cure him of his imaginary lameness. 

Sometimes blunders occur through a sensitive desire to 



HINTS TO DIFFIDENT PEOPLE. 



133 



avoid them. If, in carrying a pan of water, you spill the 
liquid on one side, you are almost certain to spill it on the 
other. In rolling ten-pins, if you roll your ball off the alley 
on one side, at the next roll it is almost sure to go off on the 
other. A diffident person who has been studying and posing 
I I for appearance at 

the coming party, 
is almost certain 
to make a succes- 
sion of blunders 
in the effort to be 
easy and graceful. 
The orator who 
is over anxious 
for appearances, 
appropriate ges- 
tures, or the very 
precise modula- 
tions of his voice, 
is apt to become 
artificial, and is 
almost sure to 
blunder either hy 
an inappropriate 
gesture, or by 
crying at the 
wrong time. A 
speaker should not be striving for pretty sentences or obedi- 
ence to certain rules. Bunyan would have blundered into 
the Slough of Despond, and stayed there, if he had aimed to 
write prettily rather than vigorously and usefully. An 
orator is the least apt to blunder who is natural, who has 
something to say, and says it. 




SIR ! SIE ! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE ! 



134 THE "COISONED PUP." 

Ludicrous blunders arise in attempting to correct them. 
A clergyman, using as an illustration the scene at Lucknow 
where Jessie Brown cries out, "Dinna ye hear it, the pi- 
broch and the slogan ? " said, " Dinna ye hear it, the pigan 
and the slobroch ? " A friend told him of his blunder, and 
he, wishing to be correct, took occasion at the evening service 
to say : " I have been informed that I said in the morning 
sermon, ' the pigan and the slobroch ; ' I intended saying, 
'the slobroch and the pigan.' Receive the blessing." One 
minister could never say, " Sweet for bitter, and bitter for 
sweet ; " but, in his nervous efforts to be correct, invariably 
repeated, " Switter for beet, and beet for switter." Macready 
tells of an actor who, in rendering the words, " The poisoned 
cup," constantly said, "the coisoned pup," to the great 
delight of his audiences. On one occasion he rendered it 
correctly. Instantly there was an uproar, and he was not 
permitted to proceed till he had given " the coisoned pup," 
and was rewarded with shouts of applause. 

While innocent and most amusing blunders are constantly 
occurring, giving occasion for merriment and making whole- 
some changes of thought and feeling from grave to gay, there 
are also many that take hold on our deepest life. Often, just 
the thought of them sweeps off the foam from the waves of 
our daily experience, and compels us to note the tremendous 
under-roll of blunders that shift our barks, yours and mine, 
from crest of wave to trough of sea on the ocean of our 
lives. Now, if the cargo we carry is more precious than 
gold, is it not of grave consequence that we make no mis- 
takes in our navigation ? 

Have we blundered in the past ? Yes. For many years, 
great sections tried to believe, and to crowd all others to 
admit, the doctrine that some of the races had no rights that 
others were bound to respect. For years a sleepless endeavor 



DIREFUL RESULTS OF A BLUNDER. 135 

was made to bend and twist all social, and organized, and 
legislative life to the justification and protection of this infa- 
mous doctrine. For many years, only a few heard a voice say- 
ing, " Shall not I visit for these things ? " Even the holiest 
tlrings and the holiest book were fiercely held and bent and 
twisted, too, to make them justify this doctrine. " What 
came of it ? " You remember the hour when there was a 
high and resistless interference with our blind, cowardly, 
and wicked treaties with the great wrong of slavery, and 
half a million lives were the direct victims, a million more, 
less direct, and the heavy burdens laid on us for many years 
to come showed to the world the awful blunder we had made. 
Now, shall we let other seeds, noxious and baleful, grow and 
spread and multiply a myriadfold, while we sleep as we did, 
when the moral sense of the nation was drugged, in the mat- 
ter of slavery? In what a condition are masses of the children 
of this nation ? The mortality of children in poor localities 
in large cities reveals a fearful blunder of society in its 
neglect of these pitiable objects. Six hundred and forty- 
eight of these little ones died under five years of age in 
one week in the city of New York. At that rate, in one 
month two per cent of all the children in that city would 
be swept away. 

We are apt to call all blunders that arise from the misuse 
of words, bulls ; and most of these we attribute to the Irish. 
Miss Edgeworth, in her essay on Irish bulls, observes that it 
never yet has been decided what it is that constitutes a bull. 
The Duke of Argyll says that the definition she means is not 
the definition of a bull, but the definition of that kind of 
bull supposed to be especially Irish, and she gives an illustra- 
tion : " When I first saw you, I thought it was you, but now 
I see it is your brother." Carleton, in his " Traits of the 
Irish Peasantry," says that Miss Edgeworth wrote an essay 



136 



BULLS OF YAEIOUS NATIONS. 



on that which does not, and never did, exist ; and he further 
says that the source of this error in reference to Irish bulls is 
in the fact that their language is in a transition state, the 
English tongue gradually superseding the Irish, and their 
blunders are the result of the use of a language they do not 
fully understand. We find ludicrous blundering by the 
French and Germans when learning another language, such 

as, " My boy bit himself mit 
a little dog," etc. ; but there 
is a neatness and complete- 
ness of confusion in an Irish 
bull which is inimitable and 
unapproachable, and which 
constitutes at once its humor 
and its innocence. The bulls 
of other nations have the 
absurdity without the fun. 
The pure bull is the contra- 
diction in terms, the assertion 
of something which is denied 
in the very terms of the as- 
sertion, or the denial of some- 
thing which is asserted in the 
terms of the denial, some- 
times apparently obscure. A hat was passed around to col- 
lect a shilling from each person at a meeting ; the deacon who 
counted the money exclaimed, "Here 's a shilling short; who 
put it in?" A lady wrote to her friend, "I met you this 
morning, and you didn't come; I'll meet you to-morrow 
morning whether you come or not." A man remarked 
to his friend, " If I had stayed in that climate till now, I 'd 
have been dead two years ago." His friend remarked, "Ah, 
if I only knew where people never died, I 'd end my days 




A SHILLING SHOKT. 



ENGLISH BULLS. 137 

there." One said, " I see no reason why women should not 
become medical men." During the Irish rebellion, some of 
the insurgents, being very angry at a banker, determined to 
ruin him. They collected all his bank notes and destroyed 
them, thus making his fortune. An Irish paper published 
this item : " A deaf man named Taff was run down by a 
passenger-train, and killed on Wednesday. He was injured 
in a similar way about a year ago." I will dismiss the Irish 
bulls by a story that was told me in Ireland. An Irish gen- 
tleman was entertained by a party of Englishmen at a hotel 
in a certain town in England, and the conversation turned 
on Irish bulls, and the Irish gentleman, being a little nettled, 
said : " Bulls, bulls, what are you bothering me about bulls 
for ? You can't talk about an Irishman without speaking of 
a bull. You have as many bulls in England as we. In Eng- 
land you are bull-headed, and bull-tempered, and bull-necked ; 
you are John Bull; you are bull all over. Now, you can't 
put up a sign on a public-house without sticking up a bull. 
In the very street where we are sitting now, there are six 
public-houses with signs of bulls." " Oh, no," said one of 
the gentlemen, "not so many as that." u But I tell you 
there are, just so many." " No, we have counted them, and 
we know there are not six." " Well, I will wager the din- 
ner for the company in the same place where we are sitting 
now that there are six public-houses with signs of bulls on 
them." " Very well, let 's hear them." " There is the White 
Bull, that 's one ; the Black Bull is two ; the Brown Bull is 
three ; the Spotted Bull is four ; the Pied Bull is five, — ." 
"Ah, that's all, that's all." "No, there's another one." 
" Ah, but we know better." " I tell you there 's another 
one. Black, white, brown, spotted, pied, and there 's the 
Red Cow." " Ha, ha ! That 's an Irish bull." " Very well, 
if the Red Cow is an Irish bull, that makes six, and I 've 
won my wager." 



EVERYDAY BLUNDERS. 



Now, we make as many blunders in language as the Irish. 
We say, we shell peas when we unshell them ; we husk corn 
when we unhusk it ; we dust the furniture when we undust 
it ; we skin a calf when we unskin it ; we weed a garden 
when we unweed it ; we unbend when we bend ; we boil the 

kettle, etc. I once saw 
a notice on a ferry boat, 
"Persons are requested 
not to leave the boat 
until made fast to the 
dock." A man, in de- 
fence of tobacco, said : 
" There's my father, he 
smokes and 
chews, and he 
is eighty years 
old." « Ah," 
said his oppo- 
nent, "if he had 
not used tobac- 
co, he might 
have been nine- 
ty by this time." 
A colored 
preacher said : 
"There will be 
a fo' days' meet- 
ing every night next week except Wednesday afternoon." 
A woman, rebuking her two boys, said: "Now, if you don't 
quit, I '11 tell both your fathers." I heard a person say of his 
neighbor, "He died and made a will." A woman fell into a 
well, and said: "If it had not been for Providence and 
another woman, I should never have got out." During an 




days' meeting. 



NATIONAL BLUNDERS. 139 

epidemic, a man said : " There are a great man y people dying 
this year, who never died before." A minister announced, 
"A young woman died suddenly last Sabbath while I was 
preaching in a state of beastly intoxication." Blunders in 
advertisements are illimitable. "All persons in this town 
owning dogs shall be muzzled." " Wanted : Two appren- 
tices who will be treated as one of the family." " Lost : a 
large lady's bead bag." u To be sold: a piano-forte, the 
property of a musician with carved legs." An advertise- 
ment of a washing-machine commenced, "Everyman his own 
washerwoman." In a western paper, a person advertised for 
a young man to take care of a pair of horses of a religious 
turn of mind. Then there are blunders of omission and com- 
mission in legislation that have their causes away back in the 
places where men vote heedlessly and carelessly, when ster- 
ling honesty and an upright conscience are ignored in a can- 
didate, and some plausible Mr. By-ends gets the great power 
to legislate. Why is it that while the legislator, the repre- 
sentative of the people, should be, like Csesar's wife, above 
suspicion, there should be the curl of the lip, the unspoken 
sneer, the shrug of the shoulders, and the contemptuous 
word at the congressman ? Yet there is, even among some 
thoughtful and wise men. Surely this is not because the 
average congressman, assemblyman or representative has 
made his place shining with steadfast virtue ; not because 
every vote and every speech and all his reflection of himself 
in character and life is a high wall of smooth rock on which 
no lobbyist could climb, no parasite of an office-seeker could 
fasten himself? No, but there has been such trickery, false- 
hood, bribery, and self-seeking fastened on so many members, 
such lack of principle, such mean truckling to the veriest 
ragamuffin or rowdy for his vote, that, like the dead flies in 
the ointment of the apothecary, they have injured the repu- 



140 OUR NATION'S DISGRACE. 

tation of the whole body of legislators. When this is ,ne 
case, somebody has blundered fearfully. Ought not such 
blunders to be charged to the electors, who fail to remember 
that it is righteousness that exalts a nation; who fail to 
remember that when any people " establish iniquity by law,'* 
even in their material luxury and prosperity, there is cause 
for alarm. Of this, the careful reader of history all down 
the ages can be assured, not even the unfinished histories 
falsifying this truth. 

Think you, if the voters who send men to Congress had 
been faithful to their high privilege, that the huge mora] 
ulcer at Salt Lake City could still continue to spread in spite 
of all the efforts by Congress to suppress the abomination? 
I was once asked by a gentleman if I had e^er read the 
life of Madame Du Barry, and he advised me if I had not, to 
read it. I think I never read of such awful depravity and 
wickedness as that record of the reign of Louis XV. It was 
loathsome and disgusting, yet from reliable sources of infor- 
mation we gather facts in our own land more terrible and 
more abominable than any that were ever recorded of Louis 
XV., or of any other monarch. In a letter I received from a 
minister of the gospel residing at Salt Lake City, he states 
that a couple came to him to be married legally, and he 
found that the woman had five living husbands, each one of 
them separated from her by the will of the chief man of this 
odious system ; and there were other statements too abom- 
inable for print. 

What a tremendous menace to all justice and purity and 
truth are the secret, oath-bound, extra-judicial organizations, 
where the free air of public discussion and comment cannot 
blow through, nor over, nor under, their principles and 
doings! Can a blunder like this be anything but a sowing of 
dragons' teeth broadcast in this land, and are not the recruits 



THE CURSE OF OFFICE-SEEKING. 141 

of this great army of wronged and cheated women, and 
duped and brutal men brought from your vicinity and mine? 
You say it is only the ignorant that are led astray. But are 
not the ignorant and misled entitled to all the protection 
that the intelligent and clear-sighted can give ? Then let us 
shun the blunder that narrows knowledge and culture to the 
people, and puts a hook in their nostrils for them to be led 
only as the crafty few would dictate ; and let us elect such 
men to places of legislative power as will remember that it 
is not a party, or an office, or a hierarch, but righteousness 
that exalteth a nation. What a pitiful sight, in a Christian 
land, are men standing before their fellow-citizens, appealing 
to the basest motives of the base, the vilest passions of the 
vile, taking advantage of the ignorance of the ignorant, 
fawning on the lowest, full of lies and all deceit, for what ? 
For office, where they may plunder those who send them. 

Oh, is it not pitiful to see men so rabid with the madness 
for office that, to gain it, they would thrust the Bible from 
our common schools, and tread on the open page of the 
desecrated Scriptures to gain place? How we are fallen 
since Rufus Choate uttered these memorable words in New 
York City, "What! Banish the Bible from our schools? 
Never, while there is a piece of Plymouth Rock left large 
enough to make a gun-flint of." Yes, we have men who owe 
their position to-day, and the ability to stand where they do, 
to the education received in our common schools, who would 
demolish the system that has made them, and make our 
magnificent institution of free education which has been, and 
is, the admiration of the world, a thing of the past, just to 
lift themselves to place and power. I declare that any man 
who dares to lift hand or voice against that free common- 
school system which is the glory of our country, either to 
sustain Mormonism, or for the sake of a vote, or at the bid- 



142 PRIVATE AND PUBLIC, HONESTY. 

ding of a priesthood, is guilty of treason to his country, 
treason against humanity, treason against God. Thank God, 
there are unstained names and well-equipped minds in whom 
honor and truth are regnant, who honor public office ; but 
such do not often seek it, the office must seek them if it 
secures their services. Would that the day might come 
when for a man to seek public office from dishonorable 
motives, or for merely selfish ends, would be to secure his 
prompt rejection. 

Then, again, there are people who scrupulously discharge 
every real debt, and are even generous and liberal, yet 
who have no scruple against practising some petty fraud 
on the public revenue. Private interests are regarded, 
while the public interests are set at naught. Very respect- 
able people get into the habit of dealing with the State as 
they would not with one another. Is not every man's duty 
to the commonwealth as high, to say the least, as his duty to 
anyone member of that commonwealth? Is it really pure 
patriotism to rush with a crowd at a trumpet's call in defence 
of your country, to march with the beat of drum and thrill- 
ing music, while a nation looks on with sympathy and praise, 
and then to cut the very sinews of defence by cheating 
the revenue, adding to the heavy mountain load of obliga- 
tion under which we are staggering ? So it is with corpo- 
rations. Many a man and woman who would scorn a mean 
act towards an individual would steal a ride on a rail- 
road, and swindle a corporation without shame or remorse. 
Can you expect a fountain to rise higher than its source? 
Will you find in the halls of Congress or in the State House 
a higher honesty in dealing with great public interests than 
you practise when dealing yourself with the Commonwealth? 
Cheat a corporation, defraud the State, and boast of it before 
your boy, or let him hear of it ; and do you know that you 



LITEKAKY BLUNDERS. 143 

may be training your State senator, your congressman, to rob 
the public treasury, and bring just disgrace on your name, 
possibly in this quick-ripening age before your own ears are 
past hearing of it? Would not that be a blunder to repent 
of too late ? 

There are very curious blunders in literature. I suppose 
Byron sacrificed sense to rhyme when he wrote, " I stood in 
Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, a palace and a prison on 
each hand." And Allan Cunningham, in the " Mariners' 
Song," blundered as Dibdin never would have done, when 
he wrote of the " Wet sheet and the flowing sea," forgetting 
that a nautical sheet is not a sail, but a rope. A celebrated 
lawyer was once neatly caught in a blunder in cross-ques- 
tioning a sailor in reference to the position of the ship at the 
time a certain occurence took place. " Now, sir, where was 
your ship at that time?" "Well, sir, we were just on the 
line." " In what latitude ? " " Eh, what ? " "I ask you in 
what latitude were you ? " " Ha, ha ! ho, ho ! " " What are 
you laughing at ? I ask you again, in what latitude were you 
at the time ? " " Now do you mean it, or are you joking ? " 
" I am not joking, and I ask you to answer my question." 
" Well, you 're a pretty lawyer not to know that there ain't 
no latitude at the equator." 

Many funny blunders occur from false orthography and 
false construction ; many of us receive letters that are 
laughable from this cause. I received a letter from a young 
professor, requesting aid in starting a classical school, and 
there were several blunders in spelling in the communi- 
cation. A speaker said in commendation of the judiciary 
that " our judges do not sit like marble statues to be wafted 
about by every idle breeze." I once heard a speaker in 
England say, "We will march forth with our axes on our 
shoulders, and plough the mighty deep so that our gallant 



144 



GKAKDILOQUENT PEOPLE. 



ship shall sail gloriously over the land." An English counsel 
said with regard to the defendant, " Until that viper put his 
foot among them." A lawyer said, "My client lives from 
hand to mouth, like the birds of the air." Another said, 
"We shall knock the hydra-head of faction a rap on the 
knuckles." A member of Congress is reported to have 

commenced a speech with, 
" Mr. Speaker, the gener- 
ality of mankind in gen- 
eral is disposed to exer- 
cise oppression on the 
generality of mankind in 
general," when he was 
IP ; pulled down by his friend 
with the remark, " You 'd 
better stop, you are com- 
ing out of the same hole 
you went in at." I have 
been amused at the poor 
Frenchman's blunder, 
who, not understanding 
the English language, was 
advised by a friend, in 
order to avoid losing him- 
self on his visit to the exhibition in London, to take down on 
a card the name and number of the street where he lodged; 
and by showing that to a policeman he would be directed to 
his quarters. The poor fellow wandered all over the city, 
showing to every policeman a card, on which was written, 
"No. 45, Stick no Bills." 

Teachers, especially Sunday-school teachers, often blunder 
i'n putting questions unwarily to children, obtaining very 
ludicrous replies. "Now, boys, what did the Israelites do 




A PUZZLED FRENCHMAN. 



COMICALITIES IN THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 



145 



after they crossed the Red Sea?'" One boy shouted out, " I 
guess they dried theirselves." A teacher endeavoring to 
illustrate a point, said, " Now, if I ignite a match, and care- 
fully place it over the gas-burner, why do I not get a light? 
Why does not the gas burn?" A boy said, "Because 
you have not paid your gas bill." "Now, boys," said a 
teacher, "I want you to 
be so still that you can 
hear a pin drop; now, 
quiet — hush — listen." 
At that moment a small 
boy squeaked out, "Let 
her drop." All burst out 
laughing, and the teacher 
lost control of them. A 
teacher asked the scholars 
in his class why it was 
that if the angels had 
wings they needed a lad- 
der to ascend and descend 
in Jacob's dream, and re- 
ceived from a little boy 
the suggestion that per- 
haps they were moulting. 
Lord Shaftesbury once 
asked a little girl, " Now, 

my little girl who made your vile body ? " and received this 
reply, "Betsy Jones made the body, and I made the skirt 
myself." " What 's a miracle ? " " Dunno." " Well, if the 
sun were to shine in the middle of the night, what would you 
say it was ? " " The moon." " But if you were told it was 
the sun, what would you say it was?" "A lie." "I don't 
tell lies ; suppose I told you it was the sun, what would you 




BETSY JONES. 



1^6 PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN. 

say then ? " " That you were drunk.'* " Now, Jenny Wells, 
can you tell me what is meant by a miracle ? " " Yes, 
teacher, mother says if you don't marry the new parson, it 
vill be a miracle." 

We often blunder in forgetting the precocity of children, 
and are often mortified at their repetition of some remark 
that we have been imprudent enough to make in their pres* 
ence. A little girl once asked a gentleman caller, "Who 
lives next door to you?" "Why, my little dear?" "Oh, 
'cause my mother said you was next door to a fool." A 
couple of visitors asked a child, " Did you tell your mamma 
we had called ? " " Yes." " And what did she say ? " " She 
said, ' bother ! ' " " Well, Master Fred, you don't know who 
I am." " Oh, but I do, though, you 're the chap ma says 
would be such a catch for our Mary." 

Young men, yes, middle-aged, old men and women, too, 
take a glance, back at the way you have come, take your 
soundings. The ship that takes no soundings finds no safety. 
Can you not recall blunders for which you have paid, and are 
paying, the penalty? All wrong-doing is a blunder. The 
righteous are wise, the wicked are foolish. Have you not 
committed blunders that have caused you sleepless nights 
and sad wakeful hours, bitter regrets, the pangs of remorse, 
the terrible consciousness of transgression, and the dread 
forebodings of the consequences, the reaping of the sowing? 
Will you not repair the blunders and bring peace to your 
soul? You can, if you will. How many to-day look with 
tearful eyes, but with a glad heart, on blunders rectified. 
True, there was a hard struggle, but the victory was won 
by perseverance, and what a glorious victory! 

Young men, when the younger son demanded of his father 
his portion, he made a blunder. When he spent his sub- 
stance in riotous living he still blundered; continuing his 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 147 

erratic course, he spent all, and was reduced to living on 
husks. All the companions of his free life had deserted 
him, and he was left alone with the swine. He was in a 
pitiable condition ; and when conscience, not quite dead, 
and the good spirit that God never wholly takes from us till 
the measure of iniquity is full, moved on his stricken heart, 
had he resisted these, it would have been the most perilous 
blunder of all ; but he said within himself, " I will arise and 
go to my father," a noble resolve, and his father met him, 
and fell on his neck, and kissed him. The lost was found, 
the dead was alive. To depart was a blunder, the return 
was no blunder ; will you not prove it so ? Some may say 
this is no place to advocate religious truth, but I ask you, is 
not the most important question with us all, How is it be- 
tween me and my Maker ? Is it well with us ? Should we 
not seek the highest enjoyment we are capable of, the most 
perfect safety, the most useful living? When we conform 
our wills to the will of the unchangeable, when our whole 
being is penetrated by the sacred influence of Christianity, 
it is filled with a sublimity that time or change cannot im- 
pair. Our lives will not then be barren of good results. 
This is the spirit that sees the end of all temptation, the 
rectifying of all blunders. It gives quietness of heart under 
every solicitude, there is no darkness or desolation which it 
cannot brighten, no gloom it cannot dispel. It has no fear, 
no wavering, no despondency. It is ever constant, ever 
cheerful, in all trials, distresses, and conflicts of life, it is a 
never-failing helper and comforter, and in its hands are the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven. 



CHAPTER V. 

RETRIBUTION — PLAIN TALK AND PLAINER FACTS — REMI- 
NISCENCES OF MY DARK DAYS — DELIRIUM TREMENS. 

Plain Talk to a Scotch Audience — Street Sights and Scenes After Dark — 
Wretchedness and Woe — " Jem, Is My John in There?" — A Poor 
Woman's Plea — A Cowardly and Brutal Husband — Incident After Inci- 
dent — What I Saw on One of My Exploring Expeditions — Awful Brutality 
Caused by Drink — Scenes I Have Witnessed — Their Effect Upon Me — 
Memories of My Days of Dissipation — A Terrible Picture of Delirium 
Tremens — A Victim's Testimony — Peculiarities of the Disease — 
Horrible Visions — Transfixed With Terror — My Own Experience — 
Civility and Incivility — How I Was Snubbed in Church — Reminiscences 
of My Dark Days — A Reckless Act — The Drunkard's Sleep — Memory a 
Curse — A Forgiving Wife — The Hardest Audience I Ever Faced — I Am 
Discouraged — The Miner Who Spoke After Me — His Wonderful 
Speech — Tramp, Tramp, Tramp — Buckle On the Armor. 



O earnest or intelligent man 
can deny that drunkenness 
is the curse of the two great 
nations, the United States 
and Great Britain. And 
those who love their coun- 
try, and are most desirous 
for its best interests and 
welfare, are among those who mourn 
most over this terrible evil. I do 
' % not mean " rabid teetotalers." Your 
judges, statesmen, magistrates, law- 
yers, the very best and most intelligent men in the commu- 
nity, are ready to acknowledge that this is a terrible curse, 
which, if not checked, will sap the very vitals of this nation. 
I once said in Scotland, "This is a land of Sabbaths, a 
148 




PLAIN TALK. 149 

land of Bibles, a land of gospel privileges, of liberty as great 
as we enjoy in America, a land of martyrs who counted it 
not loss to shed their blood on the moors and mountain sides, 
the land of Cameron, the land of Guthrie, the land of Knox, 
the land of heroes, — of Wallace and of Bruce. Oh, how 
you have degenerated, and become the most drunken people 
in the world ! " I know very well that this is plain talk, 
but we must have plain talk on this subject. It seems to me 
sometimes that there is a frightful significance in the story 
that is told of a little Russian boy, who had such wonderful 
powers of imitation. He would walk along, perfectly impas- 
sive, with a stolid face, and carrying a pipe in his mouth. 
The onlookers would shout, " Turk ! Turk ! " Then he would 
suddenly change his attitude, and start forward, with a quick, 
light step, and those about him would cry, " Frenchman ! 
Frenchman ! " But when he came before them reeling and 
staggering, they called out, " Englishman ! Englishman ! " 

Let any man go through the streets of our large cities at 
night, and note the sights and scenes that meet the eye in 
connection with the drinking system, — I mean, of course, an 
intelligent and sober man. If you start with us on such a 
tour of exploration, go without your little drop of beer or 
your glass of wine, that you may see clearly. 

Is it characteristic of Anglo-Saxons to be brutal ? Is it 
characteristic of Englishmen to be brutal? Why, there is 
not a nation on the face of this globe with a larger or more 
sympathetic heart beating for the woes, sorrows, and suffer- 
ings of others than the English. All foreign visitors, such as 
Guizot and Montalambert, are struck with the magnificent 
charity of England. Guizot speaks of it as a charity " deep, 
comprehensive, sincere, and searching; a charity which, in 
the language of the apostle, covers a multitude of sins.' Let 

there be a cry for help, through any disaster upon the river 

10 



150 



PKACTICAL SYMPATHY. 



or in the coal mines ; how quickly comes the response ! After 
the dreadful disaster on the Thames, when the "Princess 
Alice " was wrecked, and hundreds of lives lost, over £ 90,000 
sterling were collected in various places, and from all classes, 
in sums ranging from £100, from the rich man, down to a 
penny from the workingman and a halfpenny from the boot- 
black. Let there be a cry for help from India, from China, 

from Japan, yes, and 
we say it gratefully, 
from the United 
States, and how 
prompt they are to 
reply ! 

I was in Chicago 
just after the great fire, 
and I rode through 
ruins covering an area 
five miles in length by 
half to three quarters 
of a mile in breadth. 
A hundred acres an 
hour were consumed 
for twenty-four hours, 
and the people sat 
mourning in dust and 
smoke and ashes, shedding bitter and unavailing tears. I 
very well remember when the despatch came from England, 
by cable, "Draw on us, in London, for £10,000;" how it 
encouraged and comforted us. To be sure, we were doing 
all we could. The very workmen were giving one day's 
work, and one little fellow stuck up a notice, " Black your 
boots for twenty cents to-day, for Chicago ; " and he sent 
twenty-three dollars to the fire fund. 




THE LITTLE PHILANTHROPIST. 



THE DOINGS OF DRINK. 



151 



It is cliaract eristic of Anglo-Saxons to be generous, sym- 
pathetic, manly ; it is not natural for them to be brutal and 
cowardly. 

Now let us for a moment contem- 
plate the doings of drink. If you look 
through the columns of the daily |!|[( 
newspapers you will be astonished at 9 
the record of brutality. Take that col- Jr 
umninthe"Al- -jyi. 

liance Weekly 
News," giving 
the doings of 
drink, and the 
catalogue is ap- 
palling. A wo- 
man went to a 
public house 
door, ragged 
and wretched, 
her thin gown 
draggled with 
dirt; two chil- 
dren were by 
her side, hold- 
ing her dress. 
She stood at 
the door. A 
man came out. 




A BRUTE IN HUMAN FORM. 



"Yes, 



ma am. 



She said, "Jem, is my John in there?" 
Tell him I want to see him." He came 
out, an Englishman. " What do you want ? " "I want you 
to come home ; the fire is out, we have no candle, we have 
not a bit of bread, and the children are crying because they 
are hungry." What did this husband and father do ? He 



152 COWARDICE AND BRAVERY. 

struck the poor, wan creature a fearful blow in the mouth, 
and sent her reeling into the gutter ; and, shaking his silver 
in his pocket, went into the public-house to enjoy himself 
again. The poor wife staggered up, wiped the blood from 
her face, and with her children passed down the street. Is 
that characteristic of an Englishman ? Show me an English- 
man, or any other man in a civilized country, who, apart from 
drink, will do that, and I will show you a mean, contemptible 
coward and monster. 

A man that will strike a woman is a coward ; and if he is 
drunk, it is the drink which makes him a coward. If the 
man is sober and his wife annoys him, whatever the provoca- 
tion, however long her tongue may be, however irritating 
she is — and they can be awfully irritating sometimes — if 
she makes his house a perfect hell for him, if he cannot 
stand it, let him act like a man and run away. If I saw a 
man running through the streets, and a woman after him, 
I should say, "You are a brave fellow, go it." But the 
moment he should turn round and strike the woman, I 
would say, "Ah, you are a coward." 

I could give you incident after incident illustrating the 
brutality caused by drink. There was an account in the 
newspaper of a man beating a woman to death with a pair 
of tongs, beating the life out of her. He was sentenced to 
one year's imprisonment. Shame that life should be so 
cheap ! Another case : A man went home drunk. A little 
child, two years old, was crying. He said, "Stop your 
crying." The little creature only knew that she was fright- 
ened and terrified, and she cried on. What did the father 
do ? Took up that baby, his own little girl, two years old, 
and laid it on the fire. Can you show me a man in the 
world who would be guilty of such horrible brutality as that, 
except when he was drunk? A lunatic would scarcely do 



A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 153 

it. It is only the madness caused by drink that produces 
such results. 

One night I went on an exploring expedition in the 
streets, and met a forlorn man, bare-footed, with ragged 
trousers, a shabby jacket buttoned over his chest, and an old 
cap on his head. I said to him, " You are hard up." " Yes, 
I am as hard up as I can be." "Now," I said, "If I give 
you some money, will you spend it for drink ? " " Oh," he 
said, " I have had enough of drink." I said : " You look as 
if you had. Now I am a teetotaler " (by this time several 
people had gathered round him, and I thought it time to be 
off), "I am a teetotaler, and I never knowingly give a penny 
to be spent in the grog-shop. I think there is enough of the 
man left in you to give me your word of honor that if I give 
you the money, you will get a supper and a bed with it." 
He promised. I gave him the money, and took him by the 
hand, dirty and ragged as he was, and bade him God speed. 

Those are the men we call brutes, and cast out of society. 
Free them from the influence of drink, and many of them 
naturally have hearts as warm as yours, and feelings as 
tender, and sensibilities as keen, but these are blunted and 
hardened by their dissipated course of self-indulgence. 

Sometimes, after an exploring tour, I have been almost 
unable to sleep ; I could not dismiss from my mind the sights 
and scenes I have witnessed, the interviews I have held with 
victims of this vice ; and I have become so rilled with emo- 
tion that I could not utter the thoughts that burdened me. 
An attempt to speak would be choked by sobs or would end 
in tears ; my night's rest would be broken by dreams of the 
day's experience, or utterly destroyed by the consciousness 
of my utter helplessness to remedy or relieve the misery and 
wretchedness I have seen. When I recall some of those ex- 
periences and the terrible scenes that have excited my deepest 



154 A GLANCE AT THE PAST. 

sympathy, I often become inspired with a fierce desire to 
battle anew the cause of so much degradation and ruin. 

All my sympathies are enlisted for the intemperate man. 
I can sympathize with him fully, entirely, and I could have 
said to that poor, forlorn creature that night, "I have been 
as hard up as you are." On my twenty-fifth birthday I had 
no hope, no home, no expectation. I walked God's beautiful 
earth like an unblest spirit wandering over a burning desert, 
digging deep wells for water to quench my thirst, and 
bringing up the dry, hot sand, with no human being to love 
me, no living thing to cling to me. And as I stand to-day 
with the remembrance of cordiality, courtesy, and kind, 
warm greetings from scores of friends, standing under the 
arc of the bow, one base of which rests on the dark days and 
the other, I trust, on the sunny slopes of Paradise, I realize 
more and more the awful degradation to which drink brings 
a man ; and I pray God to give me an everlastingly increas- 
ing capacity to hate with a burning hatred any agency under 
heaven that can debase, degrade, embrute, blast, mildew, 
scathe, and damn everything that is bright, noble, manly, 
beautiful, and Godlike in a human being, as does the drink 
when the man becomes addicted to it and yields to the 
accursed appetite for it. Therefore my hand must ever be 
extended to the intemperate man. 

I pity a drunkard : he is a suffering man. His physical 
suffering is no light matter, but it is the smallest portion of 
the suffering he endures. What is that physical suffering ? 
There is no human being that can understand it, save him 
who has experienced it, and even to hmi it is a mystery. 
Did you ever see a man in delirium tremens, biting his 
tongue until his mouth was filled with blood, the foam on 
his lips, the big drops upon his brow ? Did you ever hear 
him burst out in blasphemy which curdled your blood, and 



DELIRIUM TREMENS. 155 

see him beat his face in wild fury? Is it the cramps and 
pains which wrench his body ? Is it the physical suffering 
that seems to rack every sinew in his frame ? No, it is 
delirium tremens, mania a potu, — a trembling madness, — 
the most terrible disease that can fasten its fangs on man. 
Delirium tremens is a species of insanity. I cannot give the 
physiology of it, but I know what I know, and that 's enough 
for me. 

It is a species of insanity, but there is a peculiarity about 
it. I was conversing with a man who had been an inmate 
of a lunatic asylum for two years, and I asked him to tell 
me what he remembered of his experience during that time. 
He remembered nothing distinctly, and was surprised to find 
he had been there so long. When a man has suffered 
delirium tremens, ask him what he has seen and felt, and he 
will tell you at once. Each horror is burnt into his brain, 
stamped upon his memory in terrible distinctness; and the 
awful visions of the past come to mock him in his sober 
moments. Let his nerves be disturbed, and he imagines that 
the premonitory symptoms of the horror are again coming 
upon him. And there is another peculiarity. The man is 
scared by images, by visions of creeping things about and 
around him. Now if these things were realities, they would 
not startle him so much. Suppose at night an animal fright- 
ful in expression and proportions was to enter your room 
with heavy tread, what would you do ? If it were a reality, 
you would spring at it, you would fight with it, and gather 
fresh courage from every resounding blow. You are fighting 
a tangible thing. Suppose that thing comes with soft foot- 
fall into your room, and you seize a weapon and strike a 
blow at it. Your weapon passes through the horrid thing, 
and you find it is a phantom. You grasp at it, and grasp 
again, and clutch nothing ; still there is a mocking look on 



156 



A HOREIBLE VISION. 



its frightful face. De Quincy has said, " There is nothing, 
for terror and consolation, which surpasses the human face;" 
and suppose that frighful thing presents a human counte- 
nance ! You are not simply frightened, but transfixed with 
horror. The skin lifts from the scalp to the ankles; your 
hair stands on end, for you know there is nothing there to 
fight. Men have been found dead in the attitude of keeping 
off some awful image like this. I once knew a man who 

was tormented with 
a human face that 
glared at him from 
the wall. He wiped 
it out, it was there 
as perfect as before. 
He stood back some 
paces, and saw it 
again. Maddened to 
desperation, he struck 
it again and again, 
until the wall was 
marked with blood, 
and a bone of his 
hand was broken, — 
all this in beating at a phantom. That is the horror of 
delirium tremens. I remember when it struck me, — God 
forgive me that I drank so much as to lead to it, although 
not one half so much in quantity as some who drank with 
me and who are moderate drinkers now. The first glass 
with me, as I have often said, was like fire in the blood; 
the second was 'as concentric rings of fire in the brain; the 
third made me drunk, and, Gocl help me ! I drank enough to 
bring upon me that fearful disease. Delirium tremens is a 
terrible disease, and men are dying from it every day. I saw 




TRAXSFIXED WITH HORROR. 



LOSS OF RESPECTABILITY. 157 

one man die from it, and I shall never forget his look ; he 
was but twenty-three years old, and he died mad. 

Very few sink so low as to lose all pride, and it is this 
sensitiveness to the opinions of others, and this lingering 
desire for the approbation of others, that is one of the causes 
of what is termed recklessness in man ; the consciousness of 
the loss of respectability induces antagonism to those who 
are superior to him in the estimation of society, and we say 
he is an impudent fellow, resisting all efforts to approach 
him. It is delightful to be respected; it is pleasant, when 
meeting a gentleman, to hear his "Good morning, sir, pleasant 
morning;" to bow to a lady in the street, and to receive her 
salutation in return. Why I have known young men to 
walk two inches taller directly afterwards. Yes, it is very 
pleasant to be respected. 

Now, suppose you have lost, by some means or other, 
the respect of society and the esteem of your friends. 
What is the effect on you of losing this respect? I main- 
tain that no man, whose heart is not renewed by the grace 
of God, can bear the scorn of his fellows without paying it 
back, scorn for scorn, contempt for contempt. Retaliation is 
human nature. Supposing, then, you have, deservedly or not, 
been deprived of the respect of others. You go to the mar- 
ket or the exchange, and see a merchant well known to you 
turn suddenly round as you approach him, and begin talking 
earnestly to a third person. What is its effect? Why, if 
you have not the Divine forgiveness taught by the gospel, 
you immediately say, " Oh, I am as good as you are, any day; 
if you don't choose to speak to me, I shan't speak to you/' 
Suppose a lady, getting out of a carriage, has her dress 
entangled, and she seems likely to fall ; you hasten to offer 
assistance ; she declines it haughtily, and requests you to 
move out of the way. The first thing you do is to turn 



158 A MORTIFYING SNUB. 

round to see if anybody saw that rebuff, your pride is morti- 
fied, and you pursue your way, considerably less happy than 
before ; and perhaps if you see another lady in a similar pre- 
dicament, you leave her there and pass sullenly on, — the 
incivility of the one makes you regardless of the other. 

I never was considered very gallant. I have a profound 
respect for women, and I believe the society of pure-minded, 
intelligent women does more to refine the manners and purify 
the heart of a young man than any other influence, except 
the gospel. But it happened that in the early part of my 
life I was debarred from the society of women, and I feel the 
effects thereof to this day. One Sunday I went to church, 
feeling, that day, in remarkably good humor, both with my- 
self and all around me. When the hymn was given out, I 
found the page and timidly offered the open book to a lady 
who sat near me. It was quite an effort. She looked at me 
from head to foot with a cold stare, took another book, and 
turned her back to me. The effect was most mortifying. It 
was cruel that an act so well meant should be so contemptu- 
ously rejected." One result of the occurrence is that I have 
never found a page for any strange lady in a church since, 
and I fear I may never muster sufficient courage again to 
risk incurring such a rebuff. The kindly intention increased 
the mortification. 

It is just so all the way down in different classes of 
society. If a gentleman is very unkindly treated in the 
course of the day's transactions, when he reaches home his 
son, who meets him with a pleasant remark, is told crustily, 
" Don't bother me." The young man is not pleased, and when 
the man-servant speaks to him, he is told to "clear out." 
The man, puzzled and annoyed, takes an opportunity to cuff 
his own boy for some trifling fault, or none at all. The boy 
rubs his head, and wonders what it is all about, and if he 



A EECKLESS ACT. 159 

chance to meet just then with a favorite dog, he gives the 
animal a kick, and tells it to " get out." This is the secret 
of the drunkard's recklessness. It is human nature, and, 
indeed, it seems to be animal nature, for the poor dog slinks 
with his tail between his legs into the street to snarl at, and 
bite, if he dares, the first dog he meets. 

I will not attempt to palliate the sin of drunkenness, and 
say that the drunkard does not deserve all that he feels ; but, 
nevertheless, I repeat that this is often the secret of his reck- 
lessness. I once associated in bar-rooms with young men 
who were greatly my superiors in life, the sons of respectable 
merchants, or professional men, and though they delighted 
to hear me sing and tell my stories, they would not speak to 
me when they saw me in the street. They were genteel 
young men ; I was not. They walked with ladies and played 
the part of the accomplished beau ; I did not. One day, 
when going through the streets, I saw one of my companions 
coming from an opposite direction with a lady on his arm. 
I tried to avoid him, as I had no wish to meet him, and I 
looked for some means of getting out of the way ; but some- 
how I could not manage it. The moment he saw me he 
made a turn and crossed the street. Seeing this, I immedi- 
ately went across, and, walking up, addressed him in a jovial 
tone, " How are you ? We had rare fun at 4 The Eagle ' last 
night, but you were drunk as a fool. You are coming to- 
night, remember ; don't disappoint us." I chuckled, because 
I felt I had power over him ; that, although despised, I could 
make his lip as white as his cheek, and bring the hot blood 
on the cheek of the lady at her gallant's being recognized by 
a tavern companion when in her society. 

The drunkard is reckless, but there is another point of 
suffering. He has not only to bear the scorn and contempt 
of others, but he has to bear the load of self-contempt 



160 THE DKUNKAKD'S SLEEP. 

besides. You may bear the scorn of your fellows ; but let 
the concentrated scorn of the community be pointed with 
hissing at you, and you can bear that better than the load of 
self-contempt, — better than you can bear the feeling that 
you are a wretched, miserable thing, from which your better 
nature shrinks in disgust ; feeling as if you had a dead body 
bound to your living frame by thongs you cannot sever, that 
body a mass of putrefaction, and yet ever with you, when 
you walk abroad, and when you lie down to sleep. Sleep ! 
The drunkard never sleeps. The drunkard never knows 
that calm sleep such as God gives to his beloved. Can you 
call that stertorous breathing sleep? Halloo in his ear; 
build a fire round him ; he stirs not, but it is not sleep. God 
pity the poor wretch, there is no sleep there. He grinds his 
teeth ; the oath, the curse, the word of blasphemy escaping 
his lips, the sweat standing in large drops on his brow ; is 
that sleep ? God save you, young men, from suffering the 
only sleep the drunkard knows. Sleep is sweet, but this is 
torture. Wherever he goes, he carries his load of self-con- 
tempt with him. 

But there is another kind of misery which he endures. 
We forget that the drunkard may be a man of like feelings 
with ourselves, but the fact really is that those very faculties 
which drunkenness cannot kill are his curse. Memory to us 
may be pleasant ; you can remember some severe trial from 
which you have, it may be, come out with locks shorn, but 
with face shining, and the remembrance of the contest is a 
comfort; it gives you strength on the battle-field of life. 
But what has the drunkard to contemplate ? The past to 
him is only as a point from which he has strayed. His 
memory is a curse. He is like an instrument out of tune, 
and yet he has a love for purest harmony, and is as sensitive 
as an ^Eolian harp. He would fain be so secluded that the 



POVERTY NO SIN. 



161 



winds of the morning should not blow a breath, lest they jar 
upon his ear. I repeat, he is an instrument all out of tune ; 
and by his side stands a weird sister, a skilful performer, and 
her name is Memory, and she strikes every chord with her 
fingers, jarring through him with most horrible discords, 
making him mad ; and he steeps his soul and senses in drink 
that he may forget the past. 

The sense of degradation is the curse of the man who 
has not become entirely depraved and reckless. He keenly 
feels his humiliation. Drink, not 
poverty, has degraded him. No, 
there is no degradation or sin in 
poverty. An old colored servant 
was asked (although 
I do not know why 
we should call them 
"colored" people, for / 
a negro was once 
asked whether he was 
a colored man, and jji 
he said, "No, I was 
born so ; I never was 
colored"), "How do 
you manage to live 
in such a smoke ? '• 
What did she say? 
" Why, honey, I 'se 
thankful to get any- 
thing to make a smoke of." Another poor creature said, 
when some one talked to her about her sufferings, "Oh, 
honey, clat is nothing. Don't you know dat is just in de 
hands of de Lord ? and sometimes He whips us and leaves us 
to see if we won't work. But, bless your heart, honey, just as 




THANKFUL FOR SMALL FAVORS. 



162 A WIFE'S LOYE. 

soon as we cries like a baby, He takes us up and comforts us." 
We meet with some magnificent experiences of Christian 
faith and trust and devotedness among the poor, I think 
sometimes more than among the rich. Poverty does not 
degrade, but sin does. Everything that defiles the spirit is 
degrading, and there is no degradation like that of drunken- 
ness, none in this wide world. 

I know, when we hear of wife-beating and all that kind 
sif thing, we say, " Men are brutes." They are not brutes. 
I have worked among them for forty years, and have never 
found a brute among them. Yet I have found " hard cases." 
But I attribute most of it to the influence of drink. A man 
will not beat his wife if he is sober. Oh, is it not pitiful to 
hear of beaten wives ? What did one of them say the other 
day? When a gentleman called to see her, her face was 
bruised and her eye black, and she said, " Yes, he did beat 
me, but he was in liquor when he did it. He was drunk 
when he did it ; and this morning he asked my pardon, and 
before he went out to look for work he kissed me with his 
famished lips, and left half a dozen potatoes for myself and 
the children. God bless him. I would give my life for him to- 
day." These are the women who are abused and crushed by 
men, some of them with hearts naturally as warm as yours, 
and feelings as tender, but debased by the abominable influ- 
ence of drink. 

I once heard a speech, and it is a much better one than I 
can make, and therefore I will repeat it. On one occasion 
I spoke to an audience of eight hundred of the hardest 
men I ever came across in my life. If you threw a joke at 
them it dropped like a stone falling into a bed of mud, 
chuck ! You could not move them to laughter or tears or 
anything else. There they sat, as if inquiring, " What are 
you going to do next?" All were alike.. I sat down very 



AN ILLITEEATE ORATOR. 163 

much discouraged, and the chairman said to me : " Now, Mr. 
Gough, if you have no objection, I should like to ask a man I 
see in the audience to come on the platform. You think 
these people have no enthusiasm, but you will find that they 
have. You have not yet seen them. This man cannot read 
or write, but he knows a great deal of the Scriptures, and 
when he preaches on the hillside, on the Sabbath, he gathers 
hundreds to hear him. If you have no objection, and would 
like to hear him, I will invite him to speak, and you will see 
how he can move this audience." I said, " Objection ? I 
should be delighted to hear him." So up he came, in fustian 
jacket and corduroy trousers. He had been in the mine, and 
had evidently given himself a splash and a wipe. He had a 
good, clear eye, and an honest face. The first thing he said 
was : — 

" How d' ye do, lads ? The gentleman axed me to come 
on th' platform b'cause he thowt ye 'd loike to have a look at 
me. I hain't no objection to ony man's lookin' at me ; ye 
may look at me if ye loike. Dunnot ye see how fat I 'm 
agettin' ? I doan't drink no beer, neither. Look at me. I 
bean't ashamed. My elbows bean't stickin' out o' my jacket, 
and my toes bean't stickin' out o' my boots. I 've got a 
clean shirt on, and I gets one once a weeak ; an' by th' look 
o' some o' you, ye doan't get one once a month. Ye may 
look at me if ye loike. I bean't ashamed if ye do. I say, 
lads, I 've made a change. I 've changed beer fur bread, an' 
brandy fur beef, an' I've changed gin fur good clothes. 
They 're pretty good uns, though they bean't very stylish-loike. 
And I 've changed rum fur a happy wife an' a comfortable 
'ome. My wife doan't lay no longer on a bundle o' rotten 
rags, an' call 't a bed ; an' my childer doan't run no longer i' 
the streets, learnin' devil's tricks ; they goas to school, an' I 
pays a penny a week fur each on 'em, and they're goin' 



164 



THE MINER'S SPEECH. 



to be better educated than their dad ever was. I 've made 
a change. Ye remember th' owd song we used to sing : — 

' When a man buys beef, be buys bones ; 
When a man buys plums, be buys stones ; 
When a man buys heggs, he buys shells ; 
When a man buys drink, he buys nothing else.' 

Ain't it true ? Ay, lads, that 's all true, an' every one o' you 
knows it ; " and they began to shout, " Hurrah, hurrah ! " 
Every one of them. 




" THE DEN I WAS BURRO WIN' IN." 



" I doan't want you to 'oiler. I did n't coom 'ere for any 
'ollering. I '11 tell ye what I did th' fust thing when I 'd put 
my name on th' temperance pledge. I went whoam and 
towd my missus, an' that brightened her up a bit. Then I 
took my childer out o' th' gutter. Then I got out o' th' 
den I was burrowin' in, and took a 'ouse, a two-roomed 'ouse. 



DICK'S STORY. 



165 



I am a ' 'ousekeeper ' now, I am. And then I thowt I 
must cut a dash myself, an' I did, but I'll never do it 
again. I got a black pair o' trousers, a canary-colored 
waistcoat, an' jacket to match, an' a foine big necktie 
wi' dots on it, an' then I got a stiff 'at, an' I'll be 
blowed if 't warn't a stiff un ; an' then I strutted up an' 
down, an' when the people that knowed me afore seed 
me, blowed if they warn't 
all putrified, every one on 
'em." Again the audience 
shouted. 

" Now, look 'ere, I doan't 
want none o' your 'ollering ; 
I want to make this 'ere 
speech what some of the 
learned gentlemen call a prac- 
ticable speech. There 's Dick 
ower there. Dick bobbed 
his head down when I said, 
4 Dick.' Everybody knows 
Dick. He 'd share his last 
crust wi' a brother pitman, 
and lend his tools to his 
brother workman if he 
know'd he'd pawn 'em next day. Dick would lie on his 
back sixteen hours pickin' coal, and spend t'other eight 
takkin' keer o' a sick child ut belonged to a neighbor, Dick 
would. But what did Dick bob his head down fur when I 
said 4 Dick ? ' Dick, my lad, you knows me and I knows you. 
I want to ax you a question. D' ye remember that bitter 
November night when th' wind was drivin' the sleet through 
the thick cloas of a man, an' you sent your little lass 
out, an' she had but one garment on her, an' that was acline- 




CUTTI^G A DASH. 



11 



166 



AN APPEAL TO TOM. 



in' to her bare blue legs wi' th' wet, and you sent her wi' 
a blackin'-bottle, an' she could hardly stand on her bare 
toes an' put th' blackin'-bottle on th' counter, an' you sent 
her wi' a silver sixpence for gin ; an' there was your 'alf- 
starved wife lyin' on th' floor, wi' a new-born babe wailin' at 
her side. Ah, Dick, that was bad. I say, lads, was 't Dick 
as turned th' lass out that night ? No, H was iK cursed 
drink did that. Down wi' th' drink, an' up wi' th' man! 
That 's my doctrine. 

"An' there's Tom 
there, just such another 
as Dick. Tom bobbed 
his head down when I 
said ' Tom.' Ah, every- 
body knows him. I 
want to ax you a ques- 
tion, Tom. What did 
you promise the lass 
when you took her from 
her mother's 'ome? 
Did n't you promise to 
love her, an' cherish her, 
an' protect her ? Have you done it, Tom ? Who gied her 
th' black eye three weeks since ? Who thrust her down 
stairs an' tore her flesh from her wrist to her elber? An' 
she covered the place ower wi' her apron, an' towd folks 
lies to shield you, an' said she tumbled. Ah, that 's bad, 
lads. Was 't Tom as struck a woman? Was 't Tom as 
threw his wife down th' stairs ? No, H ivas tli cursed drink 
as did it. Down with th' drink, an' up wi' the man ! That 's 
my doctrine. 

"I say, lads, do ye want to smooth th' wrinkles out o' 
your wife's face like ye smooth out th' wrinkles in a sheet 




DRIVEN OUT INTO THE STORM. 



A REMARKABLE SCENE. 169 

wi' a smoothing-iron? I have. Put your name on the 
pledge ; that '11 do it. I say, Dick ! Dick is coming, Dick 
is coming ! Tom, Tom, look here ! Ah, that 's right, Tom. 
Now, lads, follow a good example." 

And fifty-eight men came tramp, tramp, tramp, on the 
platform. They seized the pen as if it were a pen of iron, 
and wrote as if they were graving their names into stone. 
That man did more work in ten minutes than I could do in 
ten hours, because his discourse was adapted to the character 
of his audience. 

To the drunkard who has any desire to reform, I give my 
hand. I say to him, " My brother, you can fight this battle. 
You CAN" do it." Some people .say, "I can't." So said a 
poor creature when he took up his pen and tried to write, 
dropped it again, and turned away. He took it up again and 
said, "If anybody will take the next six weeks from me, I will 
put my name down." Yes, that is it, my man. You are afraid 
of the next six weeks. We will stand by you for the next 
six weeks. It is a hard struggle, I know. Oh, it is terrible ! 
Yet I say to you, my friend and brother, the longer you fight 
the surer is the victory. The longer you fight the less 
power your enemy has over you. He is weakened by every 
struggle, and you are the stronger. Therefore, it is a sure 
thing. Then, buckle on the armor, and fight, for victory is 
certain. 



CHAPTER VI. 



"AS A MEDICINE — A FAIR NAME FOR A FOUL THING 
PRECIOUS SCOUNDREL WITH A FAIR FACE. 



A 



Fault Finders — A Tippling LL.D. — A Cheese Argument — Scene at a 
Dinner Party — Drink as a Medicine — Doctors Who Prescribe Liquor — 
A Good Deal and Often — Effects of Alcohol on the Nervous System — 
Testimony of Two Thousand Physicians — A Distinguished Physician's 
Opinion — Diseases Produced by Alcohol — Personal Experience of an 
Eminent Surgeon — My Own Experience — An Exceedingly Suspicious 
Mixture — A Compound Fearfully and Wonderfully Made — Extraordi- 
nary Prescriptions — Mrs. McCarthy's " Noggin of Rum" — How the 
Upholsterer Got Even with the Doctor — A Good Story — Anecdote of 
Rev. Mr. Reid — " Ask My Doctor ? " — Sticking to the Same Remedy for 
Seven Years — An Offer to Loan a Thousand Dollars — Chasing a 
Bubble — My Visit to Werner's Room — A Delightful Afternoon — A 
Musical Feast. 

O moderate drinkers we ap- 
peal for help. We do not 
abuse you. We do not tell 
you that you are worse than 
the drunkard, and all that 
sort of thing; and we do 
not desire to deprive you of 
gratification with no reason but 
our own whim. But we can ask you 
to give it up, making no demand 
upon you except in the name of our 
common humanity. But some per- 
sons find fault with us, and tell us we are unjust in endeav- 
oring to deprive moderate drinkers of that which is a lawful 
gratification. 

A lady friend of mine, who never offers wine, gave a dinner- 
170 




RESULTS OF EATING CHEESE. 17} 

party at which were some literary gentlemen. One LL.D. 
said to her, "Mrs. So-and-so, I think you do me, and such as 
I am, an injustice." " How so ? " " Well, you know I drink 
a glass of wine at my dinner. I am accustomed to it. I 
don't think it ever hurt me. It does me good. I am fond of 
it. You say to me when I come to your house, ' Now, doctor, 
I shall give you no wine, because a bad use is made of it by 
some, and here is a person who, if he drinks it, injures him- 
self.' You take from me an innocent gratification, at the least, 
and that which I am used to, and which I miss if I do not 
obtain, because somebody makes a fool of himself; and be- 
cause somebody can't drink without being injured, you say I 
shall have none. Now is that fair? By-and-by you will take 
from us all our little luxuries, and there is no knowing where 
these encroachments will end. Now I like a little bit of 
cheese after my dinner; I think it promotes digestion. Now 
suppose you say, 4 Doctor, here is a man who cannot eat cheese 
with impunity ; I shall give you no cheese ; I will not give a 
particle of cheese to my guests, because some people eat 
cheese to their detriment.' Is that fair ? " 

I ask any intelligent person if that is a fair way of putting 
it ? Did you ever hear of a man on the scaffold, about to be 
hung, saying to those who came to witness his execution, 
" Take warning by me, and never eat cheese ? " Did you ever 
hear of a man murdering his wife, and giving as his excuse 
that he had been eating cheese ? Was there ever a row in 
the streets, ribs broken, and blood shed, which the news- 
papers next morning stated was because these men had 
been eating cheese ? Did you ever hear a mother mourn over 
the dead body of her child, crying, " Would I had died for 
thee, O, my son ! I have no hope in his death : he died from 
eating cheese ? " All I have to say is just this : Prove to me 
that the use of cheese produces the same results as does the 



172 



TAKING IT "AS A MEDICINE.' 



use of drink, and, by the grace of God, I will fight the cheese 
as heartily as I do the drink. I consider it the height of stu- 
pidity and nonsense to bring such an argument as that against 
us while we are advocating the disuse of intoxicating liquor 
as a beverage. We do not seek to take it away from you by 
force ; we want you to be made so far acquainted with the 

evils of drink 
that, with your 
heart and soul, 
and in the exer- 
cise of large- 
t^ffy&,^§ ■ WjP ■£ hearted, self-de- 

C y/ lv ^ ' >M '= nyinsf benevo 

lence, you will 
give it up for the 
sake of others. 
That is the grand 
principle on 
which we base our appeal, 
and it is the highest prin- 
ciple. 

Some say, however, "You 
will certainly let us have 
a little as a medicine." Yes, 
certainly we will; we do 
not condemn it as a medi- 
cine ; that is, when men really take it as such. I was once 
at a dinner-party when a gentleman at table, holding a glass 
in his hand, said to a lady present, " I assure your ladyship I am 
personally an abstainer, and am opposed " — and he swallowed 
the wine — "to the drinking usages of society; but I take 
wine by the prescription of my medical man." I thought I 
would see how much medicine he took, and before the meat 




I TAKE IT "AS A MEDICINE.' 



HYPOCEITICAL DRINKERS. 173 

was brought on he drank three glasses of sherry. I did not 
wonder, then, that people lay in their medicine a pipe at a 
time, or by so many dozen bottles. I believe a great deal of 
this medicine-taking is rank, sheer hypocrisy. It may not be 
in your case, but I believe it is in the majority of cases. A 
physician once told me that some men, whose consciences 
condemn them for sustaining the drinking customs of society, 
say to their physician, "I feel a little torpidity in my system, 
I think my digestive organs are not exactly right, and I 
thought I would ask if a glass or two of wine would not, 
perhaps, promote digestion ? " " Well, I don't know but you 
might take a little, carefully." " Thank you ; " and away he 
goes, drinking several times each day, saying, "I take my 
wine by the prescription of my physician." Some almost 
force the doctor to say that they may take it. 

If the medical men, however, were all like a medical man 
in Birmingham, there would be less taking it as a medicine. 
A lady afflicted with spasms had used intoxicating liquor as 
a remedy, by her doctor's prescription. Having changed her 
physician, something else was prescribed by the new one. 
"Doctor," she said, "why have you changed my medicine ?" 
"I never," he replied, "prescribe intoxicating liquor for a 
sick person if I can help it, for I have known fearful cases of 
an appetite for it being formed in a weak state of health ; and 
if I do prescribe stimulants, I make them so nauseous that my 
patients don't like them, and they don't urge me again to 
prescribe the tonic." I do not run a tilt against the physi- 
cians ; but when I find that two thousand physicians — among 
them Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir James Clark, and others — 
years ago put their names to a testimonial that any individual 
may at once, or by degrees, break off the use of intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage, with no detriment to his health, and 
that perfect health is compatible with entire abstinence from 



174 TESTIMONY FROM HIGH SOURCES. 

stimulating drink as a beverage, I am surprised to find so 
many persons taking it "by the prescription of their phy- 
sician." 

Sir William Gull, before the parliamentary commission on 
intemperance, in reference to the treatment of fever without 
alcohol, states: "I cured many cases of typhus in young sub- 
jects under twenty-five years of age, with camomile tea and 
with no other remedy but light diet." He further says 
that, " the error prevalent is that alcohol cures the disease, 
whereas the disease runs its physiological course irrespective 
of the alcohol. The advantage of alcohol is, if it has an 
advantage, its effect upon the nervous system for the time 
being, rendering the patient more indifferent to the processes 
going on. I am disposed also to believe, although I think 
we could not do without alcohol as a drug, that it is still 
over-prescribed." 

Again he says: "Instead of flying to alcohol, as many 
people do when they are exhausted, they might very well 
drink water, or they might very well take food, and would 
be very much better without the alcohol. If I am fatigued 
with overwork personally, my food is very simple. I eat the 
raisins instead of taking the wine. I have had very large 
experience in that practice for thirty years. It is my own 
personal experience, and I have recommended it to my per- 
sonal friends. It is a limited experience, but I believe that 
it is a very good and true experience." 

Again (I quote from the blue book) : " All alcohol, and 
all things of an alcoholic nature, injure the nerve tissues pro 
tempore, if not altogether ; you may quicken the operations, 
but you do not improve them. Therefore, the constant use 
of alcohol, even in a moderate measure, ma}^ injure the nerve 
tissues and be deleterious to health. I should say that one 
of the commonest things in our society is that people are 



A DISTINGUISHED SURGEON'S EXPERIENCE. 175 

injured by drink without being drunkards. It goes on so 
quietly that it is very difficult to observe, even. I know 
alcohol is a most deleterious poison. I would like to say that 
a very large number of people in society are dying day by 
day, poisoned by alcohol, but not supposed to be poisoned 
by it." 

Of diseases produced by alcohol, he states: "There is 
disease of the liver, which is of very common occurrence, and 
then from disease of the liver we get disordered conditions 
of the blood, and consequent upon that we get diseased 
kidneys, we get a diseased nervous system, we get gout, and 
we get diseased heart; I hardly know any more potent cause 
of disease than alcohol, leaving out of view the fact that it is 
a frequent source of crime of all descriptions." 

Dr. Benjamin West Richardson, F. R. S., stated a fact 
before the same committee, in reference to the fallacy of 
using alcoholic stimulants on extraordinary occasions, to the 
following effect (I quote from the blue book) : — 

" On Monday last, I was drawn by a big dog under a cab, 
and received a wound from three to four inches long in my 
scalp, down to the skull, and lost a great number of ounces 
of blood. Dr. Symes Thompson came to my assistance, and 
took me from Cumberland Place in a cab home to Hinde 
Street; I, in the meanwhile, holding the wound to prevent 
further bleeding. I was very greatly exhausted from the 
loss of blood and the shock and the pain which afterward 
followed in stitching up the wound ; but I never took a drop 
of alcohol in any shape or way, and in two hours I was quite 
ready to resume work. I have had no fever. I have had no 
inflammation. I have slept well, and have continued my 
work up to this time, with the only difference that I have not 
been out at night to a dinner party or a meeting. Ten years 
ago, I should have thought it would have been necessary to 



176 CHAMPAGNE FOR BALD HEADS. 

have taken three or four ounces of alcohol, and I am sure I 
should have taken it ; the result would probably have been an 
increased action of the heart from twelve thousand to sixteen 
thousand beats in the twelve hours, and therefore a certain 
amount of inflammation of the wound, the necessity the next 
morning of taking a black draught and a pill, and afterward, 
perhaps, some saline, and at least two or three da}^s' rest 
Less than ten years ago I should have thought that a neces- 
sary part of the treatment." 

A gentleman said to me, " Ah, if you go on the Continent 
you ought, at your age, to take a little wine — the water i? 
doubtful." They told me so when I went to California ; and 
they told me so when I went to Montreal. I said, " I don't 
think I need it." " But I think you do." " Well, look at 
me. I am sixty-one years of age. I have delivered seven 
thousand eight hundred addresses on the subject of temper- 
ance, and on other topics. I have travelled four hundred 
and twenty thousand miles, and I have not been in bed a 
whole day from illness since 1846." That is how I have 
managed on cold water without the aid of stimulants. I 
think there are some doctors who preseribe wine because 
they like to take a little medicine with their patients when 
they call. I think some prescribe it because they believe it 
to be necessary, and I rather guess that the physician who 
prescribed it for a very dear friend of mine was one of that 
sort. When my friend was in London, he consulted a 
physician, who said, "You ought to take a little champagne." 
"Why?" he asked. "Well, you are very tall, and you are 
very bald, and the top of your head is necessarily cold, and 
you need some stimulants to send the blood over the top of 
your head!" I suppose he believed it to be necessary. 
Some prescribe it because they do not know anything 
about it. 



A SUSPICIOUS BLACK BOTTLE. 



177 



I heard of a man who prescribed his own medicines and 
furnished his own prescriptions. He was a very stingy man; 
and when a small quantity of any of his mixtures was left, 
he put it in a black bottle. It soon contained a little ipecac- 
uanha, rhubarb, salts and senna, antimony, mercury, — a 
little of everything he had prescribed for years. Some one 
said to him, " What are you going to do with that stuff?" 
"Use it." "How?" 
"When I get hold 
of a fellow who has 
a complication of 
disorders I don't 
understand, I take 
the black bottle, 
shake it up, and 
give him a dose out 
of it." Medical men 
prescribe a stimu- 
lant because they 
do not know any 
better. It is an 
easy medicine for 
them to prescribe, 
and for their pa- 
tients to take. I am not going to deal with the medical 
aspect of this question. There are some learned and noble 
men who are grappling with that, and they can do it better 
than I, because they do it understandingly. 

I have been very busy lately in gathering up physicians' 
prescriptions, and the other day I had quite a bundle sent to 
me. Among others I have a prescription signed by the 
surgeon of a certain hospital, as the diet for an individual : 
" Two glasses of brandy and water, four glasses of port wine, 




OLD MIXEM'S CUBE ALL. 



178 GETTING EVEN WITH THE DOCTOR. 

one bottle of porter, and one pint of milk." And what do 
you suppose ails the patient ? He has a sprained ankle ! 
Another is from a surgeon to a large iron foundry, one of the 
proprietors of which gave it to me : " Give Mrs. McCarthy a 
noggin of rum." A gentleman who took the place of a 
surgeon in another hospital, told me that there was pre- 
scribed for one man eighty-six gallons of ale in six months, 
and the man's disorder was an ulcer on the leg. The ulcer 
had a rim round it nearly half an inch deep ; but the beer 
was discontinued, and the ulcer soon afterwards came up 
even with the surface. 

I do not say that medical men are always dishonest, but let 
me give you a case that occurred. An upholsterer in a cer- 
tain town constantly suffered from serious bilious attacks; 
and he paid his doctor a pretty round bill every year, besides 
sending him all the furniture he wanted. At last the up- 
holsterer signed the pledge, and at the next settling the bills 
were about square ; but at the end of the next year the pa- 
tient had not had a single visit, nor taken a single dose of 
medicine, so that the doctor had to pay him the whole bill. 
The doctor then said, " You seem to have got over your 
bilious attacks." " Oh, yes, pretty well ; I am a teetotaler." 
"A teetotaler, how long?" "Since the 1st of January last." 
" My dear fellow," said the doctor, " you have taken a new 
lease of your life ; I shall never be called upon to attend you 
for bilious attacks again, I assure you." Now, why was that 
not said before ? And why should he go on doctoring his 
patient year after year, and withhold from him the advice 
which he most needed ? 

I heard the following anecdote from the Rev. Mr. Reid. 
Two gentlemen from Scotland, when in America, visited Dr. 
Paton. While in his house, as he was a strict teetotaler, 
they adopted the principle, and it was right in them to do so. 



A WELL-TRIED REMEDY. 179 

Some time after, when Dr. Paton was in Scotland, he dined 
with one of them, and observed that wine was on the table. 

"What," said he, addressing his friend, "I thought you 
were an abstainer." 

" Oh, I use it as a medicine." 
"Do you require it for your health?" 
" You must ask my doctor there," replied his friend, point- 
ing to a gentleman who was at the other end of the table. 

" Is that true, sir ? " said Dr. Paton, looking inquisitively 
at the person referred to. 

"Yes, sir, quite true ; necessary for him." 

"How long have you been prescribing it?" 

"Seven years." 

" Is it customary," continued the Doctor, " for physicians 
to continue prescribing the same medicine when no cure is 
being effected? " 

" I don't know ; I never thought about it." 

There is not a physician who, if asked to give his honest 
answer to the question, would not admit that alcohol, used 
in a healthy state of the body, produces disease. 

" Ah, but," say some, " there is enjoyment and gratifica- 
tion in it." So there is; I have experienced that myself. I 
have felt it thrilling to the tips of my fingers with a new, 
strange, delightfully exhilarating sensation. I have been in 
a club-room when the wine has passed from one to the other, 
and we have felt ourselves great men presently, with plenty 
of money in our pockets when we really had hardly enough 
to pay our board-bill. 

One man said to another, "Look here, if you want to 
borrow a thousand dollars in your business, come down to 
my office and I shall be very happy to lend it you." The 
man thought he could use a thousand dollars admirably, and 
he went to his friend the next morning and said, " You told 



180 



GRATUITOUS ADVICE. 



me if I came to your office, you could let me have a thousand 
dollars to use in my business." " Did I ? " " Yes." " Well, 
I have n't got it now, but I may have it by night." I heard 
once of a man who, in a wretched, dilapidated condition, was 
looking at the launch of a ship. Some of the owners held a 
consultation, 
and thought 
the ship had 
better r e- 
main on the 
stocks two or 
three days 
longer. One 
of them said, 
"I should 
be unwilling 
to take the 
responsibility 
of it." This 
poor, miser- 
able fellow 
came up, 
with his 
trousers shin- 
ing with old 



age, 



boots 




LET HER SLIDE 



broken, and 

hat battered, and said: "Let her slide, I will take the respon- 
sibility" Yes, there is a gratification, an exhilaration, an 
excitement produced by the drink. Any mistakes in the 
cabinet, send for one of us; we will reconcile all ques- 
tions to the satisfaction of all parties, foreign nations in- 
cluded. When we were half drunk, beautiful visions passed 



CHASING A BUBBLE. 181 

before us, and we only wanted the canvas and the pencil 
to immortalize ourselves. There is a gratification in drink- 
ing. What is it? It is the gratification of intoxication. 

Men talk about enjoyment in drinking ! There is really 
none. It is merely momentary and imaginary. No man 
ever received satisfaction enough in wicked pursuits to say, 
" Ah, now I am happy ! " It is gone from him. All the 
enjoyments that can be obtained in this world, apart from 
the enjoyments God has sanctioned, lead to destruction. It 
is as if a man should start in a chase after a bubble, attracted 
by its bright and gorgeous hues. It leads him through vine- 
yards, under trellised vines with grapes hanging in all their 
purpled glory ; it leads him past sparkling fountains, amid 
the music of singing birds ; it leads him through orchards 
hanging thick with golden fruit. He laughs and dances. It 
is a merry chase. By and by that excitement becomes in- 
tense, that intensity becomes a passion, that passion a disease. 
Now his eye is fixed upon the bubble with fretful earnest- 
ness. Now he leaps with desperation and disappointment. 
Now it leads him away from all that is bright and beautiful, 
from all the tender, clustering, hallowed associations of by 
gone days, up the steep hot sides of a fearful volcano. Now 
there is pain and anguish in the chase. He leaps and 
falls, and rises, bruised, scorched, and blistered ; but the 
excitement has the mastery over him ; he forgets all that is 
past, and in his terrible chase he leaps again. It is gone ! 
He curses, and bites his lips in agony, and shrieks almost the 
wild shriek of despair. Yet still he pursues his prize. He 
must secure it. Knee-deep in the hot ashes, he falls, then 
up again with limbs torn and bruised, the last semblance of 
humanity scorched out of him. Yet there is his prize ! He 
will have it. With one desperate effort he makes a sudden 
leap. Ah, he has it now ; but he has leaped into the volcano, 



182 AN AFTERNOON WITH WERNER. 

and, with a burst bubble in his hand, goes to his retribu- 
tion. Heaven pity every man who follows, and is fascinated 
by, an enjoyment God has not sanctioned. The result of all 
God's good gifts to him is a burst bubble ! An Indian chief 
bartered away costly diamonds for a few glass beads and a 
plated button. Young men are every day bartering away 
jewels worth all the kingdoms of the earth for less than a 
plated button, for that which vanishes in their eager grasp. 

Enjoyment ! We have wonderful capacities for enjoyment, 
and wonderful sources of enjoyment. But I have come to 
this conclusion, young men, That there is no enjoyment worth 
having for which you cannot thank God. None ! And if you 
can get drunk, and then thank God for it the next morning, 
then I have nothing more to say to you. We have sources of 
enjoyment all around us and beneath us and above us and 
everywhere. I remember a lady asking me once, in Cincin- 
nati, if I would go and hear Werner play. Now I am exceed- 
ingly fond of music, and he is an admirable musician. We 
went to his room, and he said he would play for me on Wednes- 
day afternoon as long as I chose to listen. O, those wild, 
weird, wailing discords of Chopin, resolved into such wonder- 
ful harmony ! All I could say was, like Oliver Twist, " More, 
more," and he gave me more for nearly two hours. And then 
he stood up, twisting his fingers, and said, " You fill me full 
of music; you are such a grand listener; I will give you a 
sonata from Beethoven." When I went out I said to the 
lady who accompanied me, " I thank God for such a capacity 
for enjoyment." There is something to be thankful for. 

Stand with me on the summit of the Breven. Yonder are 
the white ridges of the Vaudois and Bernese Alps. Behind 
us, Sallenche with its bridge ; before us, hoary-headed Mont 
Blanc, the monarch of the Alps ; there, the Dome clu GOute*, 
the Aiguille du Dru, the Mer cle Glace, the Glacier d'Argen- 



THE DANGER OF GRATIFICATION. 18b 

here, the Glacier des Bossons, the Glacier de Taconnay, and 
Charnouni, like a nest of ant-hills at our feet. The Arveyron, 
rushing from the Mer de Glace, joins the Arve, and, like a sil- 
ver ribbon, winds through the valley. How deeply, darkly, 
beautifully blue the sky ! How clear the atmosphere ! Hark ! 
Is that distant thunder? No; it is the ice cracking, miles 
away in yonder glacier. Listen. It is the soft sound of fall- 
ing water, sweetly breaking the hush and stillness of nature 
in repose. How grand, how sublime, how awful ! Your eyes 
fill with tears, your nerves quiver, your heart thrills, and your 
whole soul seems to be absorbed by the wonderful grandeur 
and sublimity and beauty. And you thank God that you are 
created with such a capacity for enjoyment, and with such 
sources of gratification all around you and about you and 
above you, worthy of a God to give to man, and of man to 
receive reverently from his Maker. 

And that one fact of a little temporary gratification is all 
that you can bring in favor of the drink ! Why, if there 
was no gratification, there would be no danger. It is the 
gratification to a man of nervous susceptibility that consti- 
tutes the danger. The gratification produced by the action 
of drink on the brain and nervous system, in whatever phase 
it may present itself to you, is always harmful ; whether you 
are very jolly, or whether you are outrageously merry, or 
whether you are sullen and surly, it makes very little differ- 
ence. It is no more degrading to be brutally drunk than it 
is to be sillily drunk, and have a whole city laughing at you. 
The very fact of intoxication is debasing and degrading to the 
man, whether you get enjoyment from it, or whether it brings 
upon you the horrors of delirium tremens. God speed the 
day when our dear country shall be freed from the agencies 

that tend to promote and perpetuate this great evil. 
12 



CHAPTER VII. 

SAFETY BETTER THAN RISK — TOUCHING HOME SCENES — 
STARTLING FACTS AND UNDISPUTED TESTIMONY. 



Human Sacrifices — A Mother's Sad Story — Turning a Dissipated Son Out 
of Doors — My Interview with Him — On the Edge of a Precipice — A 
Thrilling Incident — Mad With Delirium Tremens — A Fearful Leap to 
Destruction — A Story from Real Life — That Little Word "No" — 
The Yankee Merchant and his Eggs — A Laughable Story — Startling 
Facts — The Greatest Swindle of the Age — What I Saw in a Distillery — 
Effect of Liquor on Animals — How it Affects the Human Body — A 
Most Extraordinary Story — A Physician's Horrible Experiments on a 
Corpse Distended with Liquor Gas — Puncturing the Body, and Lighting 
the Gas in Sixteen Places — A Child's Rescue — A Thrilling Scene — 
A Very Obstinate Deacon — A Funny Story— The Dutchman and His 
Setting Hen — Record of a Noble Woman — My Disagreeable Neighbor— 
A Ship on Her First Cruise — The Storm. 

REMEMBER reading in 
Prescott's " History of Mexi- 
co," that when the natives 
offered human sacrifices they 
elected the noblest and bright- 
est young men of their nation, 
and trained them intellectu- 
ally and physically, so that 
they might become fit sacrifices to their 
gods. Then they led them up on a 
platform, before the assembled thou- 
sands, and the priest, armed with a 
sharp stone, opened the breast of the victim, tore out the 
heart, and held it up, quivering with life, and the people 
shouted their approval. That was a heathen sacrifice to 
heathen gods in a heathen land ; and yet, in Christendom, 
184 




A DISTRESSED MOTHER. 185 

altars are erected in households, and worship is offered and 
sacrifice made to the blood-stained, gore-smeared Moloch, 
Drink, and the victim is often a brother or child or friend. 
Men and women, professing Christianity, gather round those 
altars and feed the fire that consumes the sacrifice ; for on 
every altar there is a sacrifice, and in every household a vic- 
tim, and when the charred bones alone are left, they are 
buried, and the work goes on as fearfully as ever. 

A gentleman in a large city sent for me to call at his 
house. I almost thought, as I entered the house, " I cannot 
be needed here." The servant showed me to the drawing- 
room, richly appointed with all that wealth could afford. A 
lady of aristocratic bearing soon made her appearance, and 
after the usual commonplaces she asked me a strange question. 
" You have had great experience," she said, " but have you 
ever known or heard of a son striking his mother ? " " More 
than once," I said, " but never unless that son was influenced 
by drink ; indeed, I cannot believe that any young man, in 
his sober senses, would strike his mother." She seemed 
relieved to know that hers was not a solitary case, and she 
informed me that she had a son who had been dissipated for 
years. 

They had tried fair means and harsh measures with him, 
but to no purpose. " At length," said she, " we have turned 
him out of the house. We have provided him with no money, 
but he will get money, and has obtained it in a way I dare not 
tell you. I wish you could see him ; but you must not let 
him know I have seen you." 

Three weeks after, a gentleman called on me and requested 
me to meet this young man at a hotel. He said he would 
introduce me, but I was not to speak on any but general top- 
ics. The young man met me very cordially. There seemed 
to be something admirable in his disposition, but he had evi- 



186 



"I WILL DRINK TILL I DIE. 



dently drank much. Shortly after, he said he knew me, and 
that he had heard me speak in the tabernacle, and that I had 
told the truth, "for," he said, "I am a drunkard." I began 
then to speak to him about drink. He said he never would 
give it up. "Perhaps you don't believe me," he said, "but 
I'll tell you the reason ; it is because I cannot, I cannot.'" "I 
don't believe you," said I. " I have tried to do it," said he, 

" time after 
time. Yes, 
sir," and he 
became excit- 
ed and paced the 
room; "I have 
disgraced my 
family ; yes, and 
they have turned 
me out of doors. 
They tried to 
keep money from 
me, but I got it ; 
I stole it, and 
will steal it again. 
I must have 
drink ; I will drink till I die ; and when I die I hope I shall 
die drunk." " I have heard men before talk as you do," said 
I; "you don't mean what you say." I spoke of his mother. 
He sprang to his feet, and cried out, " Look here, have you 
seen my mother ? " I endeavored to evade his question. 
'''•Have you seen my mother?" he continued; "be honest, and 
tell me." "I have." "And she sent you to me, did she 
not? " Then he drew himself up, his face changed, and, with 
his hand clenched and a fierce expression of countenance, he 
shonterl, " Go back, back to her, I say; tell her it is too late 




GO BACK, BACK TO HEB, I SAY.' 



"MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME." 187 

to send a temperance lecturer now ; it is too late for her to 
do anything for me. My mother is a good woman, and I 
respect her, but I don't love her ; every particle of affection 
for her is burnt out of me. I remember how, in that ac- 
cursed dining-room, she used to say, 4 Only a half-glass, my 
dear,' when she asked me to drink the health of the gentle- 
men there. Now what am I to do," added he, "but to drink 
on? for my mother taught meT 

Oh, but, it may be said, if he had not learned to drink at 
his mother's table, he might somewhere else. "It must needs 
be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the 
offence cometh." And when you give a child a glass, you 
give him that which can do him no good, but which may be 
the means of his ruin, and may lead him by and by into a 
course of evil that will be painful to contemplate. 

Some ladies have said to me, "But you total abstainers 
seem to blame us for recklessly conforming to the customs of 
society, as if we had no care whether our friends became 
intemperate or not." It is not so. Do you suppose I would 
dare to say that the mother who gives her child drink has no 
love for her child? I remember an incident that occurred 
upon Table Rock, Niagara Falls, before it fell. A lady was 
standing upon the brink of the precipice, and, seeing a shrub 
just below her, stooped forward to pluck it, when her foot 
slipped, and she fell over the precipice and was dashed to 
pieces. Now, I ask, if a brother and sister were standing on 
Table Rock, and he should say, " Sister, I '11 pluck that shrub 
and bring it to you ; a poor, timid woman, in attempting to 
pluck it, fell ; but I have nerve enough ; I can stand, and 
stoop quietly, and deliberately pluck the shrub," where is the 
sister that would say, " Well, my brother, you are not such a 
fool as to fall; you have nerve enough to pluck it?" There 
is not a sister that would not say, " Brother, there is risk in 



188 POSSESSED OF A DEVIL. 

it, stand back ! " And yet the sister is saying, "Brother, pluck 
the wreath entwined around this goblet ; thousands have been 
stung to death by the serpent concealed in the flowers ; but 
bind the wreath on your brow ; to you it shall be a wreath 
of honor, although to thousands it has been a band of ever- 
lasting infamy." It is fearful when we look at the fascina- 
tion which seems to have laid hold of the people through the 
length and breadth of the land in sustaining and supporting 
the drinking customs of society. 

A young man, the son of a wealthy merchant, after drink- 
ing freely, was seized with delirium tremens in a hotel. His 
friends came to see him, but hardly understood his ravings 
as he begged them to tear away the serpents that were twin- 
ing themselves around him. At last, feeling one of the 
paroxysms of this terrible disease stealing upon him, he 
started from his bed and cried, " Hold me ! " and dashed out 
of the window, In the street, amid broken glass, blood, and 
mire, they found him, broken and bruised, his poor spirit 
fluttering against the bars of the crippled body. They took 
him up and laid him upon his bed. They lifted the heavy, 
steaming hair from his brow, and wiped the blood from his 
face and mouth. Delirium was now gone. His face was 
pale as ashes. He clenched his fingers as if he would 
press the nails into the flesh, his lip curled over his white 
teeth in the agonies of death, and his eyes glared upon his 
companions with the ferocity of a tiger as he said, " Oh, why 
did you not hold me ? Curse ye, why did you not hold me?" 
Why did they not hold him ? It was too late ; the demon of 
drink had full possession of him, and no mortal power could 
have held him then. But when, as a boy, he stood at his 
mother's side and looked in her face with his bright blue 
eye, why did not she hold him ? When, as a boy, he sat on his 
father's knee, with his arm around his neck, and his face laid 



A WIFE'S DEVOTION. 



191 



to his cheek, in God's name why did not he hold him? 
From what? From that which no physician would dare to 
say was beneficial for a healthy child. 

I know a gentleman who married a sweet and lovely girl. 
She was very devoted to him, and when she discovered his 
dissipated habits she endeavored to shield him. When he 

stayed out at night she 
would send the servants to 
bed, while she waited and 
watched for him ; and then, 
in her night-dress, and a 
pair of slippers on her feet, 
she would glide down very 
gently and let him in. One 
night he came home late. 
The servants were in bed. 
The house had a front door, 
then a marble vestibule, and 
then an inner door. She 
opened the one, stepped 
upon the cold marble, and 
opened the outer door. 
The drunken husband en- 
tered, seized her by the 
shoulders, swung her round, 
opened the inner door, quickly passed through, and locked it 
before his wife could enter ; she would not speak or cry out, 
lest she should disgrace her husband before the servants. In 
the morning she was found with her night-dress drawn under 
her feet, crouching in the corner, almost chilled to death. 
On her death-bed she told her father all about it, or the 
circumstance would never have been known. There is much 
that is never known, as well as a vast amount of misery and 




SAVING A HUSBAND FBOM DISGRACE. 



192 AN UNFORTUNATE YANKEE MERCHANT. 

degradation that does crop out, and which is startling in its 
reality. 

Young men sometimes say it is very difficult to say " No " 
to a young lady when asked to take wine. I do not know 
what amount of moral courage might be necessary, for I have 
never been tried. These young men put me in mind of a 
Yankee storekeeper, who was a great stutterer; he could 
always say any word but the one he wanted. He had a 
quantity of eggs to sell. They rose in price from ninepence 
to a shilling a dozen. A customer came in one day. 

" Have you 201 j eggs ? " 

" Yes, quite a qu-quantity." 

" What do you sell them at ? " 

"A sh-she-she-she-ninepence a dozen." 

"Well, I'll take five dozen." 

After the customer left he resolved to guard against 
further loss, and commenced to practise : " A shilling a dozen, 
a shilling a dozen, a shilling a dozen." In came another 
customer. 

" Any eggs to sell ? 

" Yes, quite a qu-quantity." 

" What 's the price of 'em ? " 

" A sh-she — a she-she — ninepence a dozen." 

" Well, I '11 take seven dozen." 

Again the store-keeper commenced his practice : " A shil- 
ling a dozen, a shilling a dozen." In came a third customer. 

" Any eggs to sell ? " 

" Yes, qu-quite a quantity." 

" What 's the price ? " 

" Well, eggs, you know, are riz. They used to be ni-nine- 
pence a dozen." 

" But what do you sell them at now ? " 

"Well, some sell 'em at eighteen-pence, some fifteen-pence." 



CHAMPAGNE AND REAL PAIN. 193 

* But what do you sell them at ? " 

" How many will you take ? " 

" Oh, perhaps twelve dozen." 

" Oh, well, 1 11 let you have 'em for ah — eh — eh — ah — " 

"Well, how much?" 

"A sh - she - she - she — hang those eggs; take 'em all at 
ninepence a dozen." 

So young men when invited to take a glass of wine, " Ah, 
n-n-n-, well, yes, thank you." But, ladies, what right have 
you to ask any young man to take wine ? None. You have 
no right to offer to anyone that which may injure him. 

There is no benefit to be derived from drinking; there is 
no good in the wine you drink. How much wine is there 
drunk in the country, do you think? When I visited the 
island of Jersey, I was informed that there was more port 
wine manufactured in Oporto and sent to London than was 
consumed of the real wine in all the world. Yet everybody 
drinks pure wine ! Young men drink champagne sometimes, 
— sham pain at night, and real pain the next morning. 
Why, there is more champagne bought and sold in the city 
of New York than there is real wine manufactured in the 
whole world. Then what do London, Paris, and all the 
other cities do for theirs ? For they all have it pure ! Is it 
not ridiculous that persons should pay such a high premium 
for being poisoned ? Yes, sparkling champagne ! Cider 
filtered through charcoal, with sugar of lead put into it, and 
carbonic acid gas enough to make it fizz, — sham enough in 
all conscience. I talked with a champagne merchant once, 
and he said, " It is n't a cheat. When you cheat a man, you 
deceive him, but nobody can be deceived about this. When 
it is sold for one dollar or one dollar and a half per bottle, 
do you think the public are such confounded fools as not to 
know it is manufactured? Why, the pure champagne would 



194 CONFESSIONS OF A LIQUOK-SELLEK. 

be from three to eight dollars per bottle : and we, after giving 
the wholesale and retail dealers a profit, put it into the mar- 
ket for one dollar. They must know it is spurious, but they 
don't know that it costs us less than thirty cents per bottle." 
" But," I said, " many people buy it in bond." " Ha, ha ! " 
said he, " They are the most cheated of any. We can send 
tens of thousands of baskets of champagne to France, and 
have it sent back again ; people then pay freight and duty 
both ways, and then they have it pure, you know." 

I met Dr. Collenette, one of the surgeons of a hospital in 
Guernsey, who manufactures port wine before an audience 
and defies the best connoisseurs to distinguish it from the 
real. That wine costs him three halfpence a bottle, and he 
makes the port-wine crust for four bottles for about three 
farthings. This manufacture of wine is the most abominable 
cheat, the most transparent swindle of the age. Young men 
who quaff your wine, you are most thoroughly humbugged. 
If you don't believe it, get " Lacour on the Manufacture of 
Wines," and, if you can, obtain "The Wine-Merchant's Guide, 
or the Liquor-Seller's Vade Mecum," and your eyes will be 
opened to this abominable adulteration of liquors. Dickens 
has given us long articles on this subject ; and it has been 
said that, if you want a keg of port wine, you must go to 
Oporto and see it made, and then sit astride the barrel all 
the way home. 

You remember there was a failure of grapes in Madeira 
iome years ago, and grapes are failing now in France. But 
to you who drink Madeira or French wine it will make no 
difference. There may not be another grape grown ; but still 
if you want Madeira or any other wine, there will always be 
an abundant supply of it. A gentleman was going into the 
wine business in New York, and a friend said, " What are 
you going into the business for?" " Oh," said he, "to make 



A DOUBTFUL CENSUS. 195 

money. I am tired of the old jog-trot way of going to 
work." " But are there not a great many people engaged in 
the business?" u Yes," said the wine-merchant, "but I have 
obtained the services of a man from England, who has been 
engaged in London in the manufacture of wine nearly thirty 
years. I pay him $3,500 a year, and he can make any wine 
you ask for out of the water, in that kennel." That is the 
way wine is made, a great deal of it, and I repeat, there is 
no good in it, and there is a positive evil arising from its 
use. 

Some time ago I sat at the table of a Christian gentleman 
who said to me, " Mr. Gough, if I should die to-night, a 
comfort to my mind beyond description would be the fact 
that my three girls and five boys never saw one drop of the 
drink in their father's house." Thank God, there are many 
such families to-day and their number is increasing. 

Let me illustrate how unhealthy the fat of these stout 
gentlemen must be who drink spirituous liquor, wine, and 
beer. I once went into a large distillery on the banks of the 
Ohio, in which 1,700 bushels of corn are used every day, 
except Sundays, all the year round. They use steam power, 
taking the cobs of the corn for fuel, and the product of the 
distillery is about a hundred gallons of whiskey every day. 
It was said in a newspaper that the town in which this 
distillery stood was a thriving place with 14,500 inhabitants, 
— 2,500 bipeds and 12,000 hogs, — and that the hogs were 
fed on the distillery slops entirely. Certainly I never saw 
such handsome-looking animals in my life. They were 
round and fat, and, looking at one of them, you would say, 
"What a handsome porker that is!" Yes, but they had to 
keep men to watch them ; for as soon as a pig got a scratch 
on the skin it never would heal ; it turned to a running sore, 
and the animal had to be killed. The flesh of a man who 



196 A HORRIBLE EXPERIMENT. 

grows stout by drinking is not healthy. Plrysicians in hos- 
pitals will tell you that the worst cases of fracture they have 
to deal with are those of brewers' draymen, who drink so 
much beer ; that the cases which are most incurable are those 
of men who have a healthy appearance, but are puffed up 
and bloated by drinking beer. Sir William Gull, in his 
testimony before the select committee of the House of Lords 
on intemperance, says : — 

" I mention what I once saw myself, in the case of one of 
Barclay & Perkins' draymen. The case is recorded. The 
man was admitted into Guy's Hospital with heart disease ; I 
just now said that heart disease may come through drink ; he 
was a very stout man; he died at about a quarter past ten at 
night, at about this season of the year, and the next day he 
was so distended with gas in all directions that he was quite 
a curious sight. Wishing to know what this gas meant, we 
punctured the skin in many parts, and tested it. It was car- 
buretted hydrogen, and I remember lighting on his body 
fifteen or sixteen gaslights at once. They continued burning 
until the gas had burned away." 

He also stated that this result had occurred in several 
cases. 

After all, the main reason we advance for engaging in 
this crusade against drink is our regard for others. We want 
something of the spirit of benevolence that prompted an old 
lady in New Haven. A horse ran away with a wagon, and 
there was a little boy in it ; and she ran screaming after it. 
Somebody said, "Madam, is that your boy?" "No," said 
she, " but it 's somebody's boy, is n't it ? " 

Suppose you should see a child drowning in the river, 
vould you, in place of rushing in to save it, say, "Why, look 
at that child in the river, whose child is that? I wonder 
nobody looks after it ; I 'm thankful it 's not mine. What a 



RESCUED FROM THE FLAMES. 



197 



pity it should be left to drown. Why don't parents look 
after children a little better ? If that child was mine, I 'd be 
more careful to keep it from peril." Or suppose at night a 
fire breaks out in the city. If you knew the fire had broken 
out in a house inhabited by 
human beings, would not 
your sympathies be excited 
to the utmost? See, the 
flames are bursting out at that 
window, up there ! Every 
eye is fixed on the spot. 
There 's a child there ! Who, 
who will save him ? See how 
the flames are rolling out- 
wards and upwards ! A lad- 
der is raised, one of the 
sympathizing crowd ascends, 
he 's at the window, boldly 
he dashes into the burning 
building; the spectators are 
awe-struck, their eyes are 
fixed on the window he has 
entered ; it is a moment of 
painful suspense. Ha ! he 
has the child, he has the 
child ; he is safe, safe ! The 

deliverer is overwhelmed by the grateful manifestations of 
the citizens, and the noble deed is recorded in all the news- 
papers. 

What is moderation to one may be drunkenness and death 
to another. Suppose a bridge built over a deep gulf, and 
capable of holding a weight of one hundred and fifty pounds. 
Your weight is one hundred and thirty pounds ; that is a 




just saved! 



198 OBSTINATE PEOPLE. 

safe bridge for you ; you walk up and down in perfect safety. 
But there stands your son, who weighs two hundred pounds, 
and you tell him to follow your example. " But I don't 
like the bridge, father." " Don't be a fool ; I have walked 
over it for years in perfect safety ; there is no crack about it, 
I have never felt it give way." " Yes, but they say — ." 
" Don't be such a fool as to mind what they say. One man 
can do what another can. Follow my example, and don't 
mind the fanatics." The young man sets his foot on the 
bridge ; there is a crash and a shriek, and he goes down to 
destruction. Why did not the father set a good example? 
Because, he did not take into consideration the difference in 
the weight. I say to any gentleman, or to any lady, that 
you cannot, with any regard for the safety of that boy of 
yours, of a nervous temperament, full of fire, easily excited, — 
you cannot, in view of the evils of drunkenness cursing the 
land and sweeping away some ©f the brightest and best 
among mankind, say that you set him a good example by 
your moderation. This point is of such vital importance 
that it will bear repetition. 

We ask you to help us, to help us in prevention, and to 
help us in cure. I know it is vain to appeal to some people, — 
utterly vain. There are men who take pride in being very 
firm, when in reality they are simply very obstinate. They 
say, " Oh, yes, I will go to the meeting, but he can't move 
me. I defy any man to make me laugh or cry. I will hear 
what he says, but I can never be persuaded to give up my 
little drop of beer. I won't." " And why ? " " Because 
I won't." They are not able to give a reason. 

A minister of the gospel told me that once he had a man 
in his church who was so persistently obstinate that he could 
do nothing with him. He tried on all occasions to move him. 
No use. He was a member of the church, and they thought 



PRAYING FOR THE DEACON. 199 

if they made him a deacon that would do him good. So 
they made him a deacon, and then he was worse than ever. 
Now I have found out in my experience that when a man is 
absolutely obstinate, the best thing is to let him alone. His 
obstinacy is his only stock in trade for notoriety ; take that 
from him and he comes to his own level, — and that is, mor- 
ally speaking, a lot of clothes with a hat on the top of them. 
The more you plead with such men, the more you cultivate 
and strengthen their spirit of obstinacy. Well, this man 
became a deacon, and then he troubled the church ten times 
more than before. At last, at a church meeting, the minister 
was perfectly worn out with the deacon's obstinacy, and he 
said : " Brethren, we will resolve this church meeting into a 
prayer meeting. We have done all we . possibly can for 
Deacon Williams, and now, as a last resort, we will make 
him the subject of prayer. Brother So-and-So, we will unite 
with you in prayer for the deacon." So he prayed, and at 
the conclusion he said : " Now that we have done everything 
we can upon earth for this brother, we pray thee to prepare 
him and take him to heaven." And the deacon rose and said 
very deliberately : " Brethren, I won't go." And there are 
men who will not go to heaven if you want them to, and the 
best way to get them there is to let them alone. 

I very well remember meeting a man of this kind when I 
began to speak on the subject of temperance. I had not 
quite as much experience then as I have now. Some one 
said to me : " Now, there 's a man ; if you can get him to sign 
the pledge, it will be a great victory." " Great victory ! 
why ? " " Because he 's such an obstinate fellow that it will 
be a great victory to overcome his obstinacy." I met him, 
and I said : " Mr. Rice, why don't you sign the temperance 
pledge?" "Because I won't." "But why won't you?" 
"Because I won't." "Well," I said, "Mr. Rice " (I thought 



200 



THE DUTCHMAN'S SETTING HEN. 



a funny story might reach him), "you remind me very 
much of a Dutchman who had a hen, and he said to a 
friend : ; I vants dot hen to set, und she von't set. She 
hops off dose eggs und runs avay. Den I makes a leetle pox, 
shust so long von vay und shust so long t'udder vay, und I 
puts dose eggs in dot pox, und den I 
catches dot old hen, und snubs her dis vay 
und dot vay, to let her know vot I means, 
und says. " Now set ! " But so soon as I 
turns mine pack, avay goes dot hen ; und 
den I catch her von, two, free, 'leven 
dimes, und knocks her dis vay und dot, 
efery dime, und say, " Now sit dere ! " 
But I vinds I could do not- 
ting mit her. So I gets a 
leetle lid to dot pox, und 
says "Now I dinks I've 
cot you ; " and I puts dose 
eggs in dot box, und chams 
dot hen town, und I say, 
Hurrah ! A leetle vile after- 
vords I goes to see how she 
gets on, und I lifts up von cor- 
ner of dot lid, and I shust 
looks in. Oh, my goodness ! 
dere vas dot old hen shust a- 
setting standing up ! ' " Well, I did n't get a smile from him, 
but he said this much : " I think I 've got a good deal of the 
old hen in me." 

Now there are some men we cannot move. If we move- 
those to help us who are not themselves injured and ruined 
by the drink, we must ask them to abstain for the sake of 
others. And as I have said before (and I am not going to 




OH, MY GOODNESS! 



A NOBLE WOMAN. 201 

repeat the words, but the sentiment) all hekoism lies in 
self-sacrifice ; and if you would be a hero, it must be by 
doing and suffering for others. For a man to be a hero it is 
not requisite that he should be scientific, literary, intellectual, 
logical, oratorical, or eloquent ; not at all. How many heroes 
are there in humble life, who are doing their work in the 
spirit of self-sacrifice ! Let me relate to you the case of one 
in our own country. 

During the last year of the war, three gentlemen, one of 
them an Englishman, were riding through some of the out- 
lying towns of New England. The Englishman said, " The 
painful feature to me in New England country life is the 
immense amount of human vegetation one sees." " What do 
you mean?" "Well, in these isolated country towns without 
railroad communication, what do the people do? What do 
they see? Where have they been? What do they know? 
You, who are working in the busy haunts of men and know 
what life is, cannot call that ' life ' which you see here. Why, 
it is existing in a circle ; it is a sort of vegetation. Now 
there you see a specimen of just what I mean." 

They were passing a farm place, and on one side was a 
little house, a one-and-a-half-story house, and at a window sat 
a woman knitting. She had a black band round her white 
widow's cap, and was of advanced age. "There," he con- 
tinued, "that's just what I mean. Look at that woman. 
She eats and drinks and sleeps and knits and knits and 
sleeps and drinks and eats, day by day; but you can't call 
eating and drinking and sleeping and knitting, life. What 
does she know ? Where has she been ? What has she seen ? 
What has she done? There sits a human vegetable." Stop, 
sir; stand still awhile and look well at that woman. Her 
name is not known beyond the circle of her acquaintance, 
within the radius of a mile or two, but look at her. Sixteen 
13 



202 A MOTHER OF HEROES. 

years ago she was left a poor widow with six children — the 
youngest a boy of four years old. She owned that little old 
house and four acres of land ; she was poor, for New England. 
Where is her eldest son ? Doing his work as a missionary 
in a foreign field. Where is her second son ? Doing his 
work as a home missionary in western Iowa and Kansas. 
Where is her third son? His work is done, and he lies 
under the sod at Gettysburg. She gave him up without a 
murmur and she wears that black band for him. Where is 
her youngest, her Benjamin ? With his regiment, doing his 
duty in defence of the Union. But there were six of them ? 
Ay, but a requisition came from Roanoke and Newbern, 
" Send us teachers for our contraband negroes, teachers who 
are willing to endure privations and to make sacrifices with- 
out remuneration," and her two daughters have left her for 
their field of labor, and she is alone, eating and drinking and 
sleeping and knitting. Well, let her eat and drink and sleep 
and knit, struggling with poverty. She has, nevertheless, 
brought up her family of children ; she has given them to her 
country and her God, and now she sits, quietly biding her 
time. If that is a "human vegetable," God send to our dear 
country a plentiful crop of such vegetables. 

You stand on one side, and drink your glass coolly, and 
despise another man because he is weak-minded. Can he 
help that? It is his infirmity. And instead of despising 
him for his infirmity, you will, if you are a Christian, fulfil 
the law of Christ by bearing the infirmity of your weaker 
brother. Why do you despise a man because he cannot do 
what you can do ? We are very apt to despise men for their 
infirmities. And I, old as I am, am learning many lessons 
about this, and so are you. 

I once went into a strange church in a city in the United 
States. I was on a lecturing tour. The usher gave me a seat 



JUST AS I AM." 



203 



and placed a man by my side, poorly dressed, and, in fact, 
a very disagreeable man. He would shrug his shoulders and 
jerk his elbows. His face twitched as if sheet-lightning 
was playing over it. He was exceedingly disagreeable. I 
said to myself, "I wish they had put me near any other 
man than this." By and by he put his tongue out and made 
a gasping noise. " Dear me, what a disagreeable man ! " I 
began to dislike him. I 
began to detest him. I 
said to myself, "I wish 
they had put 'him in an- 
other pew," and I moved 
as far from him as I con- 
veniently could. He was 
a disagreeable man. The 
hymn was given out for 
the congregation to sing, 
and it was this : — 



" Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that thy blood was shed for me." 

I heard that man try to sing, and I 
thought to myself, "Well, really, if he 
knows that hymn, he cannot be so ex- 
ceedingly disagreeable." So I moved 
nearer to him until I heard his singing. It was awful. I am 
exceedingly fond of music ; I would travel miles to hear good 
music. It was positively painful to hear his attempt at sing- 
ing. Such groaning, and squeaking, and hesitating! He 
would stop in a line to make that strange noise. Then he 
would begin just where he left off, and sing as fast as he 
could to catch up with the others. Then he would go on 
with such a rush that he was two or three words ahead of 
them. I said to myself, " At any rate, this is a disagreeable 




A DISAGREEABLE 
NEIGHBOR. 



204 THE LAUNCH. 

man." I moved away from him again. He came to a line 
where he evidently had forgotten the words, and without 
looking at me, but turning toward where I stood, he said, 
" Would you please give me the first line of the next verse ? " 
I said, " Yes, sir, 

' Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.' " 

He said, " Thank you sir, I know it now, for I am blind, 

God help me. And I am paralytic." Then I heard him try 

to sing, 

"Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind," 

and I tell you, I never heard a symphony of Beethoven 
that thrilled me as the jagged music of that Christian man 
with whom God was dealing, and I could have taken him, 
disagreeable as he was, right to my heart. 

How many times we take a strong dislike to, or experience 
disagreeable feelings toward, some brother man, and when we 
know something of him we find that he is an angel whom we 
have sent away from us with rude words and harsh looks. 

One word more. We have occasional reactions, and many 
are discouraged. 

There may be something like reaction, and we can call it 
reaction, but it may be simply the settling down from a spe- 
cial excitement to the solid ground of principle. We are not 
to be carried away by excitement, and should not be. We 
are advocating glorious principles, high and lofty principles, 
and we will seek for God's help in our noble cause. But we 
must prepare for experiences that may, perhaps, be not a little 
discouraging. Observe a noble ship as she is launched. She 
is fully rigged, and is now ready for sea; and as she sails 
down the river, she sweeps past most majestically on her first 
voyage. There is a band of music on the quarter-deck, the 
sailors are decked in their holiday rig, each at his station, and 
from the trucks to the main-chains are flags flying on either 



THE STOEM. 205 

side. On the wharves and on the banks of the river stand 
the assembled multitudes with waving hats and handker- 
chiefs, cheering the noble ship on her first cruise, and bidding 
good-by to the passengers on their first voyage. Are all 
these gayeties to last; is all this excitement to continue? No. 
She passes down the river ; she gets out into the ocean ; by 
and by the captain sees a cloud no bigger than a man's 
hand. Does he keep that band of music on the quarter- 
deck? Does he keep the sailors in their holiday attire? 
Does he keep the flags streaming mast high? No. He 
issues his orders through the speaking-trumpet in tones 
that may be heard all over the ship. No music now on 
the quarter-deck ; the sailors have on their tarpaulins and 
sou'-westers, and are clad in fitting garments for the coming 
storm; the flags are hauled down and stowed away. Now 
man those yards, stow every light spar, furl this sail and 
reef the other. Every man at his post, two at the helm, 
and now we are prepared for the storm, and we will trust 
in Providence. The tempest bursts upon the gallant ship, 
and she quivers in every timber. The waves grow mighty, 
strong, and fierce, yet she rises on their crests and again 
plunges into the mighty trough of the sea. " Keep her head 
to the wind," shouts the captain. By hard struggling and 
a great display of skill and courage she is kept afloat. By 
and by the sunlight breaks through the murky clouds, the 
sky becomes clear, she passes into smooth water, and they 
are all safe, with not a plank started, and why ? Because 
in calm weather they prepared for the coming storm, and 
then trusted in God. Let us imitate their example. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FACT AND FICTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE — SMILING FACES 
AND TREACHEROUS HEARTS — MEN WHO WEAR MASKS. 



Variety the Spice of Life — Difficult Things for Me to Do — What I Aim to 
Do — Life Often a Disguise — Snakes in the Grass — Men Who Wear 
Masks — Duels, Debts, and "Innocent Amusements" — A Persistent 
Collector — " I '11 Fix Ye " — The Boy and the Cherry Pie — Absurd Sen- 
tences — Amusing Illustrations — White Lies — Story of a Minister, a 
Bull, and a Bass Viol — A Matter-of-fact Musician — The Old Lady who 
was Struck by Lightning — Loving " Everyting zat is Beastly " — Woman's 
Rights — A Vision of Eden — "Bridge! Bridge!" — An Animated Poli- 
tical Discussion — Its Sudden End — A Laughable Story — A Cool Boarder 
— His Opinion of His Landlady's Butter — Choosing Between Three 
Lovers — The Captain's Device — How it Worked — Wasted Lives — 
Human Wrecks — Real Heroes. 



SUPPOSE an indispensable 
requisite for a discourse of 
any kind is a title, and this 
is a difficult matter for me to 
fix upon. " Variety is the 
spice of life," and I suppose 
it will be considered as spice 
chapter of this book. For my- 
decide that a title is necessary 
peg to hang a few thoughts 
upon. No one expects me to write 
an elaborate essay on a given sub- 
ject ; I could not if I tried. I find it very difficult to stick. 
to my text. If I select a subject, I cannot treat it philoso- 
phically or scientifically, and hardly methodically. I like to 
interest if I can, and amuse if I can; but, above all, my 

206 




MASQUERADING IN REAL LIFE. 207 

earnest desire is to benefit. I know that a lecture from me 
is often a thing of shreds and patches ; but if I can say any 
word or utter a thought that will be a help or stimulus to 
anyone in the great conflict of life which is to all of us a 
daily battle, and may be a daily victory, I am content. I 
have some things to say that will not be arranged under any 
particular head, and therefore I trust to the kindness of my 
readers to pardon the liberties I take in my ramblings. 

I have selected the title, then, of " Fact and Fiction." 

I might say truth and falsehood, or the true and the false, 
shadow and substance, outward show and inward feeling, or 
right and wrong; for truth is always right, and wrong is 
ever false. 

In modern society, life is often a disguise. Almost every 
man walks in masquerade, and his most intimate friend very 
often does not know his real character. Many wear smiles 
constantly on their faces, whose hearts are unprincipled and 
treacherous ; their smiles are more to be dreaded than their 
frowns. They smile and smile, and murder with a smile. 
Many, with all the external calmness and serenity of an even 
temper, carry within them a volcano of passion. Some, while 
they speak with sympathy, are full of gall and bitterness. 
Ah, yes ; and perhaps if we could look into the inner heart 
of the man whose hand we clasp in friendship, we would 
shrink from him with loathing and disgust. There is so 
much hidden beneath the surface, that we know, at the very 
best, but a portion of the truth. The best and worst deeds 
of men are unchronicled. Men who' have been hung on the 
gallows amid execrations, and men who have been carved in 
marble, may have been surpassed in villainy or virtue by 
hundreds whose names will be forever unknown. 

Could we see the weakness of the strong, the ignorance of 
the learned, the cowardice of the brave, the folly of the 



208 BELIEF A1SD CONVICTION. 

wise, — could we discern the motives that influence the best 
and the worst of men, — we should be compelled to regard 
every man as wearing a mask, and concealing the real fea- 
tures of his mind. It is true that we hide more than we 
exhibit. How often do we seek to appear other than we 
really are, stifling our emotions, trying to appear happy when 
our hearts are bursting, affecting calmness when strong 
passion, burning in our veins, is clamoring to break forth. 
Many who are ill scrupulously hide their infirmities ; those 
who are well affect ill health; rich people try to appear 
poor, and poor people endeavor to pass themselves off as 
being very rich. How often we take evil for good, and 
good for evil. When Joseph was stripped of his coat of 
many colors, cast into the pit, and sold to the Ishmaelites, 
it seemed a rugged path, but it proved to be the highway 
to Pharaoh's favor. When Haman erected a gallows fifty 
cubits high, he imagined that he saw Mordecai hanging on 
it, but he was hung there himself. 

Then, again, there is all the difference in the world be- 
tween mere belief and conviction. There is a belief which 
has not the slightest influence over man's actions, for men 
scarcely ever act from opinions to which they have given 
mere theoretical consent. A thief believes that "honesty is 
the best policy," but he does not live up to this truth. That 
young man knows he will injure his health by this or that 
practice. He will acknowledge, "I know smoking hurts 
me ; " "I am aware that coffee is not good for me ; " "I 
know that these late 'hours and dissipation are ruining 
me." That young lady will acknowledge that many of the 
customs she follows are injurious ; but no impression is made 
on her mind. Such persons proceed to do that which, when 
pain and pangs torment, and coughs rack and consume, they 
bitterly repent of; and had they youth and health again, 



DEBTS OF HONOR. 209 

with their experience and convictions, they would scrupu- 
lously avoid the follies and indiscretions of life. Draw up a 
set of propositions on which half a million of people are 
agreed, and nine tenths of those giving their assent would 
violate the agreement by their conduct. All agree that iresh 
air is necessary ; exercise is necessary ; moderation in eating 
and drinking is necessary. Now, if people were really con- 
vinced of these facts, their conduct would show it ; but they 
are not convinced, nor anything like it. It is often difficult 
to induce men to acknowledge their conviction of the most 
obvious and admitted truths, even if their own welfare 
depends upon acting on these truths. 

How often, too, does the " father of lies " deck his own 
offspring in the garb of innocence. How many terms we use 
which are untrue ! An " affair of honor " means a man's 
being compelled against his own conscience to risk his life 
and that of another by a mean, cowardly fear of the world's 
opinion. " Debts of honor " mean that a man must sell his 
coat, if necessary, to pay a loss at the gaming-table when 
he would not, if he could, pay his washerwoman. " Inno- 
cent amusements " often mean pleasures which derive their 
piquancy from not being innocent. " A good fellow " often 
means a wild, headstrong character who seems bent on his own 
destruction. " A smart fellow " often means a dishonest one, 
like the man who was employed in collecting a bill of one 
hundred dollars from an obstinate debtor, his employer 
offering him half if he could collect the bill. Some weeks 
after, he asked him how he succeeded. " Lookee here ! " he 
exclaimed, " I had considerable luck with that bill of yourn. 
You see I stuck tew him like a dog tew a root, but for the 
first week or two 'twarn't no use, not a bit. If he was at 
home, he was short ; if he was n't at home, I got no satisfac- 
tion. By and by, says I, arter going sixteen times, ' I '11 fix 



210 



THEFT OR SMARTNESS? 



ve,' so I sot down on the door-step, and sot, and sot, all day 
and evenin', and began early next day, and about ten o'clock 
ne gin it up. He paid me my half, and I gin up the note." 

Another story of the same kind is related of a traveller 
who stopped in a diligence at Brussels, and, being hungry, 
was desirious of obtaining a piece of cherry pie, but was 
afraid the vehicle would drive off and leave him. He called 
to an urchin in the streets, " Here, go and get me a piece of 

cherry pie, and here's money 
enough to buy yourself a piece." 
Presently the boy came back, eat- 
ing his pie with great relish, and 
returned one of the pieces of 
money, with the remark, "The 
man didn't have only one 




I SOT, AND SOT.' 



=gf piece, so I bought that with 
the money you gave me." I 
suppose if you entrusted a 
basket of peaches or pears, or 
a box of oranges, to an express 
carrier, and he ate the best of 
your fruit while in transit, 
some might call him a smart 
fellow; I should call him a thief. Not that fruit is ever 
stolen in transit, although I have heard people complain at 
the shrinkage of fruit during a passage of a few miles by 
rail ; but then fruit will shrink. 

How absurd sentences may be made by false construction 
or punctuation. A man who was suddenly taken sick, "has- 
tened home while every means for his recovery were resorted 
to. In spite of all their efforts he died in the triumphs of 
the Christian religion." Or this, "A man was killed by a 
railroad car running into Boston, supposed to be deaf." 



LITERARY ABSURDITIES. 211 

A man writes : " We have decided to erect a school-house 
large enough to accommodate five hundred scholars five 
stories high." An old edition of a geography has this: 
"Albany has four hundred dwelling-houses, and two thou- 
sand four hundred inhabitants, all standing with their gable- 
ends to the street." On a certain railway the following lump 
nous direction was printed : " Hereafter, when trains moving 
in an opposite direction are approaching each other on sepa- 
rate lines, conductors and engineers will be requested to 
bring their respective trains to a dead halt before the point 
of meeting, and be careful not to proceed till each train has 
passed the other." A steamboat captain, advertising an 
excursion, says: "Tickets twenty-five cents; children half 
price, to be had at the office." Coroner's verdict: "That A. 
B. came to his death by excessive drinking, producing apo- 
plexy in the minds of the jury." A hotel was thus adver- 
tised : " This hotel will be kept by the widow of the former 
landlord, Mr. Brown, who died last summer on a new and 
improved plan." Wanted, "A saddle horse for a lady weigh- 
ing about nine hundred and fifty pounds." An Iowa editor 
says : " We have received a basket of fine grapes from our 
friend W, for which he will please accept our compliments, 
some of which are nearly two inches in diameter." " Board 
may be had at No. 4 Pearl Street for two gentlemen with gas." 

Over a bridge at Athens, Ga., is the following: "Any 
person driving over this bridge in a pace faster than a walk, 
shall, if a white man, be fined five dollars, and if a negro, 
receive twenty-five lashes, half the penalty to be bestowed on 
the informer." A newspaper contained this : " We have two 
schoolrooms sufficiently large to accommodate three hundred 
pupils one above another." Another newspaper, in describ- 
ing the doings of a convention at Cleveland, said: "The 
procession was very fine and nearly two miles long, as was 
also the prayer of Dr. Perry, the chaplain." 



212 



UNFORTUNATE MR. LONG. 




Sometimes men will gain their ends by what is called a 
pleasant fiction, and I do not know that there is any moral 

wrong committed, if there 
is no intention to deceive. 
An old minister, who was 
very much opposed to the 
introduction of a bass-viol 
into church, was in the midst 
of his sermon, when a bull 
that had escaped from the 
pasture stopped in front of 
the church and began to 
bellow. The doctor paused, 
and looking up into the 
singers' seats, said : " I would 
thank the musicians not to 
tune their instruments dur- 
ing the sermon." In another minute " Boo ! " went the bull. 
" I really wish the singers would not tune their instruments 
while I am preaching ; it annoys me 
very much." " Boo ! " went the bull 
the third time. "I have twice re- 
quested the musicians in the gallery 
not to tune their instruments during 
sermon time. I now particularly re- 
quest Mr. Long to desist from tuning &\ 
his big fiddle while I am preaching." WA 
Up jumped Mr. Long, " It is n't me ; 
it 's that confounded bull." The big 
fiddle was never heard again in that 
church. This Mr. Long was some- 
what matter-of-fact, like the old lady who, when complaining 
of rheumatism, was asked if she had ever tried electricity for 



ME. LONG'S ACCUSEK. 




ME. LONG. 



STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. 213 

it. " Law, yes," said she, " I was struck with lightning once, 
and it did n't do me a bit of good." 

Again, there is truth often in an apparent contradiction, 
as when the Irishman in the House of Commons remarked of 
the French people that they were so restless they would never 
be at peace till they were engaged in another war. Or truth 
may be conveyed when there is no intention. A Frenchman, 
when asked if he loved dogs, said : " Oui ! I love dogs and 
cats and horses and cows, and I do love everyting zat is 
beastly." 

We hear a great deal said of woman's rights and woman's 
wrongs, of woman's mission, and all that sort of thing. 
I believe in woman's rights; but what are they? Are there 
not false ideas current in reference to woman and her rightful 
position ? Pardon me if I introduce here a few words about 
woman ; and I will, with your permission, take you into the 
garden of Eden. " And the Lord God took the man and put 
him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." We 
have here a human being as perfect as God could make, with 
mental and moral powers fresh from the hand of his Creator, 
with a perfect and holy body. God had planted the garden 
for him to live in. Flowers, trees, shrubs, were of divine 
choice; every bower, and walk, and lawn was planned by 
divine wisdom. What a garden must Paradise have been ! 
The shady grove, the forest, the hill and vale, the rose of 
Sharon and lily of the valley, were perfect. There was no 
alloy, not a care to distract, not an object disagreeable to 
the man with powers in perfection to enjoy, fully enjoy. 
And yet his solitary condition is the only thing in Paradise 
which Jehovah pronounced not good. He looked on every- 
thing else and behold it was very good, but, " It is not good 
that the man should be alone ; I will make him an help meet 
for him." Imagine Adam in Paradise ; everything to please the 



214 WOMAN'S POSITION AND BANK. 

eye, and charm the ear, and minister to a pure taste. If ever 
there was a being of whom it could be said, " It is good for 
him to be alone," that being was Adam, and yet " It is not 
good that the man should be alone ; I will make him an help 
meet for him." The creation was incomplete without woman. 

If God has attached such importance to female influence 
as to pronounce the Eden of his own planting a solitary 
abode until Eve inhabited it, shall not we attach importance 
to the fact sufficient to assert the high character of her 
destiny, and qualify her to fulfil the station allotted her by 
Divine Providence as man's helpmate? We must under- 
stand " helpmate " as a help of equal rank and corresponding 
dignity with man. There are thousands of men who 
imagine that women are created merely to flirt with, to 
amuse them when young, to be petted and caressed and 
played with, and by and by to cook their food, look after 
the household affairs, and gratify their wants and wishes. 
Helpmates, with such, are only a superior order of domestic 
animals rather than man's intellectual and moral associate, a 
help meet for the rank and dignity of man. 

Burns says that Nature tried her 'prentice hand on man 
before venturing on the finer task of fashioning woman ; but 
men in general are slow to admit woman even to an equality 
with themselves, and the prevalent opinion certainly is that 
women are inferior in point of intellect. We cannot come 
to a decision on such a question until the position of women 
in society is such as to give fair play to their capabilities. 
Take a class of boys and girls learning the same lessons or 
studying the same subject; you never find girls inferior 
to the boys. Their memories are as strong, their per- 
ceptions as clear, and their understandings are as vigor- 
ous. They learn as fast, and as easily comprehend what 
they are taught. They make as rapid progress in arith- 



EQUALITY OF BOYS AKD GIRLS. 215 

nietic, grammar, languages, and history. Many teachers 
give it as their opinion that you can often make girls 
understand a difficult subject better than boys, and I 
believe that experiment and observation can detect no 
inferiority, to say the least, in the minds of the weaker 
vessel during infancy, childhood, or youth. 

But let the woman grow up with the idea that — as the 
boy said — while "the chief end of man is to glorify God 
and enjoy Him forever, the chief end of woman is to get 
married ; " that her sole object is to look out for a suitable 
match, to lay plans or traps to catch an eligible husband ; 
that she needs no insight into science ; that to be literary 
is to be blue ; that she is to have no vocation in which the 
cultivation of her intellectual power is necessary ; that if she 
is too learned she will frighten away that very polite and 
agreeable young man who intends never to marry a woman 
who knows more than he does; that she must contract her 
intellect to the dimensions of his ; that all the education and 
training will be of no use when she is married; that she 
will forget her French when she is married ; that she will 
have no time for music when she is married ; no necessity for 
natural philosophy when she is married ; and the education 
which is to elevate her will be pursued with a listlessness 
and apathy that always fall on man or woman engaged in 
any pursuit of which they can say, " What 's the use ? " 

I might give a list of illustrious women who have demon- 
strated that woman's mental inferiority is a mere fiction. 
We have the publications of women on history, natural 
philosophy, poetry, religion, and fiction, that will bear com- 
parison with the general literature of the other sex. The 
wives of missionaries find no greater difficulty than their 
husbands do in acquiring the language of the people among 
whom they labor. Many women are distinguished botanists, 



216 MY OPINION OF WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 

conchologists, and geologists; their collections, specimens, 
and cabinets are quite equal to those of the other sex. 
Jane Taylor was thoroughly acquainted with divinity. Had 
Hannah More not been a woman, she might have had her 
B. A., M. A., D.D., or LL.D. Walter Scott has given strong 
testimony to his high appreciation of Joanna Baillie. I 
might multiply cases and weary you with the catalogue. 

Oh, but — well, but ; but what ? Why, women have not 
the application of men. How rarely does a woman give up 
when she is determined, and how seldom does she fail. How 
many a noble enterprise would have been abandoned but for 
the firmness of woman. Often her zeal is quickened and her 
diligence doubled by obstacles. I hold that woman is capa- 
ble of being a helpmate corresponding to the nobility of man. 
In sensibility she is his superior, and the great requisite 
is that her intelligence and sympathy should mutually 
influence each other; intelligence and moral principle must 
be blended with sensibility to make woman what God 
designed her to be. 

I am not an advocate of woman's rights according to the 
theory of strong-minded women, as I have said before. I 
have very little sympathy with what are called strong- 
minded women, who would thrust woman out of her sphere, 
and force her to occupy a position for which she is not 
qualified in any respect. Woman in her sphere is all-power- 
ful, but dress her in male attire, let her unsex herself, and 
sacrifice woman's softness, tenderness, and modesty to an 
insane desire for woman's rights, and she loses her influence 
for good. I dislike to see women strutting about in Bloomer 
costume, men's jackets, and standing collars, as if they could 
not assert their rights without making themselves ridiculous. 

Women have work to do, and every woman who has force 
of character enough to conceive any rational enterprise of 



AN ERRAND OF MERCY. 217 

benevolence is sure to carry it through. When Elizabeth 
Fry and her noble helpers first entered the cell where a 
wild, half-savage looking crew of women were mustered, the 
sheriff said, "Ladies, you see your materials." A lady who 
accompanied her said, " I felt as if I were going into a den of 
wild beasts, and shuddered as the door was closed upon me," 
yet the brave, gentle-hearted leader was left alone with them 




THE PRISON VISITORS. 



for hours, and such was the effect produced that the " New- 
gate ladies," as they were called, became advisers at the 
Home Office in the matter of prisons and convict-ships. 
When Florence Nightingale, at Scutari, wanted blankets 
for the poor, sick soldiers, she was told that they could not 
be obtained without an order from some official, signed and 
countersigned. She cut the red tape by ordering the doors 
to be broken open on her own responsibility, and the blankets 

14 



218 



UNFAIR ADVANTAGES. 



were appropriated by the poor, wounded men. Clara Barton 
and scores of noble women in our own country devoted years 
of unwearied devotion in ministering to our brave soldiers. 

Some men have the faculty of obtaining their ends by 
taking advantage of accidents, forgetting that truth cannot 
be affected by contingencies ; and they often obtain a tempo- 
rary triumph, although for the moment they may seem to 




A UNANIMOUS VOTE. 



have achieved their purpose. And the truth is no more 
revealed than when, on board a canal-boat, a company of 
politicians stood on the deck, highly excited in a political 
discussion as to the coming presidential election. They 
were approaching a low bridge, when the steersman called 
out " Bridge, bridge ! " But they were so absorbed in their 
discussion that no one heard the warning, except one man, 
who took advantage of it to cry out, " Look here ! let 's take 



THE POWER OF FLATTERY. 219 

a vote ; all in favor of Martin Van Buren, stoop ; all opposed 
stand up." The Van Burenites ducked their heads, and all 
the others were knocked down — a unanimous vote for Mar- 
tin Van Buren ! 

An assent to our assertion is sometimes not very pleasant. 
I suppose the lady at the boarding-house was a little annoyed 
at the coolness of the boarder who generally managed to con- 
sume his three dollars' worth in about four days, and who was 
very fond of butter, and ate it freely. The poor woman at 
last said, " Mr. Short do you know that that butter you are 
eating so freely cost sixty cents a pound." "Ah, did it?" 
taking another large slice, and rolling it in his mouth with 
great relish, " did it ? well, I should say that that butter was 
worth sixty cents a pound." 

Compliment has been defined as implying something not 
entirely to be credited. We all like smooth words. We see 
ourselves in our glass, and although we may be old and plain, 
yet there is a pleasant satisfaction in being told that we 
are young and handsome, and all are more or less open to this 
form of compliment. But there are people to whom anything 
can be said with a good chance of being believed, who 
see no incongruity between their deserts and the highest 
praise, and whose vanity seems to be a vast magnifying and 
embellishing power. How easily and pleasantly we are flat- 
tered for qualities we do not possess. In truth, one can 
natter a man more by telling him he can do things well that 
he cannot do at all, than by telling him he can do things 
well for which he has specially qualified himself. Take 
a deacon of a church, who is a very good bootmaker, and tell 
him he can preach a better sermon than his minister, and he 
is better pleased than if you tell him he can make a better 
boot than anyone in the neighborhood. Tell a man whose 
legs on horseback look like a pair of compasses, and whose 



220 



HOW TO CHOOSE A HUSBAND. 



every nerve is strained by the exertion of an hour's riding, 
that he is an easy rider, and, though aching in every limb, 
very little persuasion will be required to induce him to re- 
mount. 

There are various judgments by different individuals of 
what is sensible in a man. Leslie tells a story of a captain 
of a packet-ship, who often had ladies placed under his 
charge for the passage, and who was 




LOVES TEST. — THE MEN WHO JUMPED. 



/- >f/fi /flHIKSk '' liH 1 ' I Hi I sometimes consult- 

I iFmm^m w ±h f * love f airs 

that occurred on 
the voyage. On 
one occasion, a 
lady who was very 
attractive received particular attentions from three young 
gentlemen, and consulted the captain as to which she should 
encourage. " Well, you come on deck some calm day, and 
I will have a boat lowered, and you shall jump overboard. 
I '11 take care of you, and see which of them will jump 
after you." She did so, jumped overboard, and two of them 
leaped into the sea. Here was another difficulty ; which of 
the two should she encourage? She consulted the captain. 



EXAGGEKATION. 221 

His advice was, " Take the one that did not jump, he 's the 
most sensible man of the three." 

Then there is the exaggeration in speech that is not so 
harmless in its effect; such as, "the place was crowded to 
suffocation ; " "I had the headache, I thought I should have 
died;" "I was up to my knees in mud;" "I'd give the 
world to hear Jenny Lind." Now do not call me fanatical 
and puritanical if I say that the practice of expressing our- 
selves in an inflated and thoughtless way is more mischievous 
than we may be aware of. It may lead us to sacrifice truth ; 
the purity of truth may be sullied; or the standard of 
integrity lowered by incorrect observations. While on this 
point let me go a little further, looking at the matter freely 
and faithfully. You cannot give greater offence than to call 
a man a liar. How many young men would shrink from 
telling a dishonest lie, because they are honest ; or a boastful 
lie, because they are modest ; or a malicious lie, because they 
are good-natured ; and yet would swerve from the truth and 
tell a lie which they considered perfectly innocent. Think- 
ing that there is no harm in a simple falsehood, are they not, 
though honest, modest and good-natured, liars? and is the 
truth in them ? A man should value truth for its own sake. 
Once undermine the reverence for truth, and the vice of 
lying may increase by exercise, until, by and by, one may 
spurn the bonds that truth would lay upon his tongne, and 
go to the widest extent of his invention and the utmost 
stretch of his imagination. Let not our good-humor prevent 
us from giving right names to wrong things. Begging the 
question is cowardly, and judgment is perverted by calling 
evil good. What, must I tell the truth if it hurts the feel- 
ings of another? Unpleasant truths need not always be 
told ; men who always blurt out unwelcome truths are offen- 
sive, and a lie may be told with the kindest motives ; but 



222 LIVING AN AIMLESS LIFE. 

there are cases in which you must tell either the truth or a 
lie. You are not responsible for consequences or results. 
Do right and leave the consequences with Him who is truth, 
and loves and guards his own. If we do evil that good may- 
come, we take the matter out of His hands into our own. 
Direct falsehood, under any circumstances, I consider to be 
wrong, though it may involve no other sin but itself. There 
is an uprightness of speech as well as of action that we 
should strive to attain. Love the truth, follow the truth, 
and practice truth in word, thought, and deed. 

How many men's lives run to waste, not because the dis^ 
position is intensely wicked, but because there is no settled 
purpose to live right; not because the mind is preoccupied 
by bad intention, but because it is unoccupied by any inten- 
tion at all. Without purpose, they begin life ; they plough a 
little, sow a little, but reap no harvest. They pay a price, 
but secure no purchase ; letting the spirit of achievement die, 
they become drones in the hive of society ; with a man's 
faculty for enjoyment, improvement, and usefulness, they 
fritter away their energies, become morbidly miserable them- 
selves, do no good to others, and become as disgusted with 
life as the rich man who committed suicide, leaving a paper 
on which he had written, "I die because I am weary of 
living to eat, drink, and sleep," — or settle down into the 
selfish, useless man of the world, content, after their poor, 
miserable fashion to be, till death thrills them into a wakeful 
consciousness of what they are, what they have been, what 
they might have been. They have lived well for themselves, 
have kept good society, furnished a good table, and held high 
state, but no blessing comes upon them from anyone whom 
they have saved. They present to the Father no soul saved 
by their influence as a token and result of work in his vine- 
yard, but all is a blank, their life is a sham, and their passing 






A MELANCHOLY SIGHT. 



223 



away leaves all survivors indifferent, and the world will never 
miss them ; gone, gone, are they to their own place. 

But more painful is the wilful wasting and squandering of 
life, health, talent, and "energy which God has given to glorify 
him and bless the world, in wicked, sensual gratifications. 

See that young man, rich 



in all that might make 
him great, with robust and 
vigorous health, and even 
with high and noble am- 
bition, starting in that 
deceitful, flowery path of 
sensual delights, chasing 
the bubble pleasure, 




AS SHE WAS AND AS SHE IS. 



breaking through every restraint that the law of God would 
throw around him, blasting his reputation, stultifying his 
intellect, changing the image of God into the stamp of the 
Devil's die, until he becomes a wreck. See that battered hulk 
lying on the strand. Once she was a fair bark, trim, copper- 
fastened; with rigging all taut, and streamers flying, she 
walked the waters like a thing of life. Now her black, broken 
ribs stand up irregular and gaunt, like spectres of the past ; the 
waves washing through her gaping seams, and wind sighing 



224 TYPES OF MEN. 

through her rotten rigging, seem to sound a sad requiem of 
departed days. Do you not feel sad as you gaze upon the 
ruin of man's workmanship? Oh, how unutterably sad to 
look upon the wreck, the ruin of a man, a being fearfully 
and wonderfully made, endowed with glorious capacities for 
all that is noble and grand ; the tenement shattered, and the 
tenant, once capable of serving God, now stained, defiled, 
driven out before its time, where, ah, where? God know- 
eth. Oh, it is pitiful, pitiful, and, God forgive us, these 
wrecks are all around us; these ruins lie across our foot- 
path, wrecks of men, ruins of men. Oh, that every }^oung 
man would heed the solemn injunction, "My son, if sinners 
entice thee, consent thou not." 

There are braggarts and blusterers in society, but there 
are many kind-hearted souls who are happy, when they can 
make others so. There are tattlers and busy-bodies; but there 
are silent, reflecting observers of men and things, who say but 
little ; but when they speak, it is as an oracle. There are men 
who wear smiles on their faces, whose hearts are unprincipled 
and treacherous; but there are true friends with a rough 
outside, who speak with their hands more than with their 
tongues, with deeds rather than words. There are brutal, 
hard men ; but there are many loving men, who act as a balm 
to the rankling wounds of humanity. There are men who 
are full of gall and bitterness, hateful, and hating one 
another ; but there are compassionate spirits whose " charity 
thinketh no evil, suffereth long, and is kind." There are 
thankless repiners, always magnifying their little troubles ; 
but there are grateful spirits that, come good or ill, always 
sing of mercy ; to them " the heavens declare the glory of 
God," and "the earth is full of his goodness." There are 
proud and supercilious sceptics who affect to pity simple- 
minded Christians ; but, thank God, there are men and 



UNNOTICED HEROES. 



225 



women who set a value on his word above all earthly things. 
That is the stronghold where they go for safety, the treasure- 
house where they obtain riches, a never-failing source of 
wisdom, encouragement, reproof, and correction. 

The world's estimate of men is not generally the correct 
one in the highest sense. How many real heroes pass by 
unnoticed, modest, quiet, unattractive, and unassuming ; 
the gay avoid them and pass them by with a sneer ; only 
those who know them fully appreciate and love them. They 
would not particularly grace a drawing-room, the thoughtless 
throng heeds them not ; to them they seem stained, marred. 
Why, my fine gentleman, these marks and stains are hon- 
orable scars, obtained on many a well-fought field ; they have 
entered the conflict of life with brave, true hearts, and will 
be at last ranked among those who have overcome. 



CHAPTER IX. 



IN THE TOILS OF THE TEMPTER 
— THE BATTLE OF LIFE - 



-CHARMED UNTIL CHAINED 
A STAINED RECORD. 



The Old Lady and the Haystack — Driving Nails in One's Own Coffin — The 
Green-eyed, Fiery-tongued Serpent — Robbing Birds' Nests — Suspended 
in Mid-air — A Frightful Position — Only a Single Strand Between Life 
and Death — A Thrilling Incident — Narrow Escape — My Frolic With a 
Child — A Boy Again — The Drunken Loafer — Look on This Picture, 
Then on That — Youth and Old Age Side by Side — A Picture for Young 
Men — Past, Present, and Future — A Physician's Story — A Pathetic 
Incident — Alone — A Night in the Cold and Dark — A Little Girl's Sad 
Story — The Old Lady's Feelings — "A Certain-sort-of-Goneness " — 
Nearer and Nearer to the End — A Stained Record — Life is What You 
Choose to Make it — " Where Are Those Dogs Going ? " — Treasures Laid 
up Above — Life's Battlefield — Honorable Scars — A Disgraced Regiment 
Winning Back Their Colors — Honor Retrieved. 



'HE great object we have in 
view is to stir up the people 
to do something against the 
fearful curse of intemperance. 
We think we gain one great 
point when we can make 
them acquainted, in some de- 
gree, with this terrible evil. A great 
many persons tell us that they see 
nothing of all the evils we describe. 
The fact is, they know no more about 
the evils of drunkenness than the 
old lady knew of the scenery through which she passed the 
first time she ever rode in a railroad car. Some one said to 
her, " Well, madam, what did you see ? " " See ! nothing at 
all but a haystack, and that was going the other way ! " We 

226 




THE FASCINATION OF DRINK. 227 

want to show people, if we can, the terrible evil we seek to 
remove. I wish I could lift the curtain that conceals from 
their view the secrets of this awful charnel-house. That ter- 
rible curse of drunkenness ! the mind of man cannot grasp it 
in its wide extent. God never gave a man an imagination 
powerful enough to conceive it, or eloquence sufficient to 
illustrate it so that it could be at all understood. This great 
curse is caused by one thing, and only by that, and that is 
the drinking of intoxicating liquor as a beverage. Therefore 
we fight the liquor because that is the cause which produces 
these results. 

I have said before, and I say again, no man intends to be- 
come a drunkard. No man starts with the intention of ruin- 
ing himself, bringing disgrace upon his family, staining his 
reputation, blasting his prospects, destroying his manliness, 
and ruining himself, body and soul. No man intends to do 
it. But the fearfully deceptive influence of the drink is 
made manifest by the way in which men go down the fatal 
sliding-scale, inch by inch, foot by foot, to utter ruin. 

Oh, the fascination of the drink ! How great its fasci- 
nation over men who are overpowered and overruled and 
overmastered by the curse of this appetite ! We see men 
to-day destroying themselves by it, and they know it. Do not 
tell me that such a man does not know that he is going to de- 
struction. He knows that every glass he takes is another nail 
driven and clenched in his coffin. He knows it, and still he 
proceeds. Sometimes, in his desperation, he wrestles with his 
enemy, only to feel his own weakness, — wrestling sometimes 
for life, with the serpent twining about his body, twisting 
round his throat, glaring in his eyes with its green orbs, and 
licking his lips with its forked fiery tongue. He struggles 
hard, and comes out of the conflict defeated. 

On the island of Hoy, in the Orkneys, the inhabitants earn 



228 



A THRILLING STORY. 



a precarious livelihood by robbing the birds of their eggs. 
To get at their nests, men are let down by a rope from a 
clifT one thousand feet 
in height, and when 
they are down per- 
haps five hundred feet, 
the men at the top 
make the end of the 
rope fast. Each man 
has a signal cord. 
Then, as they hang 
out clear of the 
cliff, they, with a 
swinging motion, 
work themselves 
toward it. By and 
by they catch hold 
of some jagged rock 
or a root or shrub, 
and there they hang 
in mid-air, and fill 
bags with the eggs 
of the birds. 

One man, sus- 
pended thus between 
heaven and earth by 
a single rope, swung 
himself into a crevice, 
and was busy at his 

work when he was "the strands began to snap/ 

attacked by an eagle. The eagle came at him with full 
force, with wings and beak and talons. The man swung 
out into the air, while the eagle battered him with its wings 




THE BOTTOMLESS GULF. 229 

and tore at him with its beak and claws. Holding on with 
one hand, the man, with his other hand, drew his long, 
sharp knife, and made a desperate blow at the eagle-; but he 
missed the bird and cut through the rope by which he was 
suspended, all but a few strands, and these began rapidly to 
untwist and the threads to snap. He made the signal, was 
hauled up to the edge of the cliff, and — just saved. But 
they told us his hair had become white during that awful 
experience. 

There are young men hanging over the bottomless gulf by 
a single cord. It is all that binds them to life, home, hap- 
piness, and heaven ; it is all that holds them. Instead of 
making the signal to be hauled up to the edge, they ate 
using their knives in cutting away every strand of the rope. 
Thousands of them are dropping into the awful gulf, utterly 
ruined for time and eternity by their own act and by their 
own purpose, fascinated by the power of the drink. 

Let us put aside pauperism, wretchedness, suffering, and 
loss of life, as minor matters. I place the loss of life among 
minor matters, for what if drink should destroy this body, 
this tenement of my soul? If it leaves the tenant untouched 
it is a small matter. Should drunkenness destroy the casket 
and leave the gem, what matter? An old divine has said, "I 
care but little where the bark of my flesh is wrecked, if I can 
but save the passenger." But drunkenness destroys both the 
casket and the gem, it wrecks the bark and engulfs the pas- 
senger, ruins both body and soul, blasting everything that is 
noble and glorious and grand and beautiful and manly and 
godlike in man. Look at its effects ; contemplate it in its 
awful reality as crushing humanity down to the level of the 
beasts. Do we treat the drunkard as a man? No. Do we 
feel for him as a man? No. Do we think of him as a man ? 
No. We see him thrust out with the stench and filth of the 



230 LOWER THAN THE BEASTS. 

grogshop ; we see and think of him as drink has made him, 
and we are apt to conclude that he was so always. Some- 
times it is a hard matter to look upon a blear-eyed, bloated 
drunkard as made in God's image, for it seems as if debauch- 
ery had been effacing that image, and had pretty well suc- 
ceeded. His intellectual nature has become a devil, and his 
animal nature has become a beast. He is not like one occu- 
pying the same scale of being, a member of the same family. 
With his blotched countenance and the gibbering idiocy of his 
expression, we ask, What is this thing? Can it be a man 
made in the image of God? Yea, a man, our brother. 

Some time ago, in the grounds of a friend, I was playing 
with a beautiful boy. We enjoyed a frolic in the garden for 
awhile, I making of myself a sort of mimic wheelbarrow, and 
carrying him to and fro upon my back. You would scarce 
have been able to tell whether the little boy or the big boy 
was the more delighted with the fun, for I loved him and I 
knew that he loved me. While we were so engaged, the 
gardener told us, that in a field at the foot of the lawn, a man 
was lying on the grass, very drunk. I took the hand of my 
little companion, and asked him to go with me and look at 
the man. There lay before us a man of hoary hairs ; his hat 
near him, his gray locks waving with the wind. With one 
hand he had seized the breast of his coat and vest as if it 
were with the grasp of death, and the other was twisted up 
behind him ; his lips were convulsively moving, and with his 
breath there came a stench which polluted the pure air of 
heaven. There lay the form of a man, his face upturned to 
the bright blue sky ; the sunbeam that warmed and cheered 
and illumed us, playing unfelt and unenjoyed upon his 
bloated, greasy face. There he lay as drink made him ; and, 
as I gazed on him in his degradation, the very horses and 
cows looked far nobler than he. 



PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 231 

As I looked upon the poor degraded wretch, and then 
upon the child beside me, with his noble brow, his beautiful 
blue eyes, his rosy cheeks, his pearly teeth, and ruby lips, the 
perfect picture of health, peace, and innocence, and compared 
these with what was exhibited by the miserable being before 
us ; as I looked upon the man, and then upon the child, and 
felt his little hand convulsively twitching in mine, and saw 
his little lips grow white, and his eyes fill with tears as he 
gazed upon this poor drunkard, — oh, then, did I pray God, 
in my heart of hearts, to give me an everlasting and increas- 
ing capacity to hate — hate, hate with a burning hatred — 
every instrumentality that could degrade and sink the 
nobility of man into the horrid thing that lay before me. 

Young men, let me bring before you a vision. Before us 
stands a bright, fair-haired, beautiful boy, — the type, the 
picture of health and beauty. That is youth ; that is your 
past. Another figure stands before us, the youth grown to 
the man, genius flashing from his eye ; his broad brow 
denoting intellectual strength as he claims for himself power 
over the minds of his fellow-men. There he stands, a glor- 
ious being. That is your ideal. Then appears a trembling, 
wretched thing, fetters on his limbs, his brow seamed, sensu- 
ality seated on his swollen lip, the image of God marred. 
What is that ? Is that your present ? Then you shall see 
another vision. It is a wretched, emaciated creature ; you 
see his heart is all on fire ; the worm that never dies has 
begun its fearful gnawings. What is that? It is your 
future. The power of evil habit does not destroy conscious- 
ness. The curse, to the man who is going down step by 
step, is the remembrance of the past. All the bright dreams 
of his imagination are vividly before him, but separated from 
him by a continent of grief and disappointment, pain of body, 
and fever of spirit. Distant, clear, but cold, is the moon 



232 A DREADFUL CONDITION". 

that shines on his waking agony or on his desperate repose. 
He has been the slave to evil habit ; he has spent his life and 
his fortune, sold his birthright. And what has he obtained? 
Can any condition be more dreadful than his, with ambition 
and no expectation ; desire for better things, but no hope ; 
with pride, but no freshness of feeling? When we know 
there are so many men wrecked and ruined by this one 
agency, and especially when we know by experience some- 
thing of its power, — can we sit still and not wage an 
aggressive war upon our enemy and the enemy of our race 
and country? 

There is no power on earth that will make a man or a 
woman a fiend like the power of drink. A physician told 
me that once, when he was employed in visiting some poor 
families, he found a girl, about fifteen years of age, an intel- 
ligent little creature, ill of consumption. He knew the father 
and mother were drinkers, but he did not dream they would 
neglect their suffering child. The physician came home 
very late one night after a hard day's work, and had not vis- 
ited his little patient. He felt so uneasy all night about her 
that, early next morning, a bitter cold morning he went to 
her house. There he found the little creature alone in a 
squalid room, sitting by an empty fireplace, her arms tightly 
folded round her, as if to keep her little shivering frame from 
falling to pieces, racked, as it was, by the cough from which 
she suffered. 

" Elizabeth, my child," said the physician, " what are you 
doing here ? Why are you not in bed ? " "I have not been 
to bed, sir." 

" Have you not been to bed all night ? " " No, sir." 

" Where are your father and mother ? " " They have 
gone to bed, sir." 

" Why did they go to bed and leave you up ? " " Father 



A PITIFUL CASE. 



233 



brought home a bottle of rum last night, and they drank 
it and went to bed." 

"And have you been sitting here all night, my child?" 
" Yes, sir." 

" Have you had no light ? " " No, sir." 

"No fire?" "No, sir." 

"Have you 



been sitting all 
night in the 
cold and dark, 
alone?" "Yes, 
sir." 

Think of the 
suffering in body 
and mind that 
little girl en- 
dured in the 
long hours of 
that bitter win^ 
try night, sitting 
from night till 
morning, in a bare and deso- 
late room, ill, no fire, no light, 
and without sufficient cloth- 
ing to keep her frail body 
warm. And there, in an ad- 
joining room, lay her father and mother beastly drunk. I 
say, then, there is no power on earth that will make a man 
or a woman a devil so quickly as the power of drink. 

Look at the effects of drunkenness upon a man. God 
made man in his own image ; what mars that image and 
stamps it with the counterfeit die of the devil? Drink does 
it. " Man by nature walks erect and lifts his forehead to the 

15 




THE PHYSICIAN'S DISCOVERY. 



234 GHASTLY WITNESSES. 

stars," and he is crowned lord of creation : what breaks his 
sceptre, tears his crown from his brow, and degrades him 
below the level of the beasts ? Drink does it. What sears 
his heart, and dams up the fountain of pure and holy affec- 
tion ? It is the drink. What fills our almshouses and our 
jails? What hangs yon trembling wretch upon the gallows? 
It is the drink. And we might almost call upon the tomb to 
break forth. Ye mouldering victims, wipe the crumbling 
grave-dust from your brow ; stalk forth in your tattered 
shrouds and bony whiteness to testify against the drink ! 
Come, come from the gallows, you spirit-maddened man- 
slayer, grip your bloody knife, and stalk forth to testify 
against it ! Crawl from the slimy ooze, ye drowned drunk- 
ards, and with suffocation's blue and livid lips speak out 
against the drink. Snap your burning chains, ye denizens 
of the pit, and come up, sheeted in fire, dripping with the 
flames of hell, and with your trumpet tongues testifying 
against the deep " damnation of the drink." 

No young man expects that anything of this kind will 
come upon him. I do not say that it will, but I want young 
men who drink to test this matter. Just test it. A man in 
business takes account of his stock, does he not, to see how 
he stands commercially ? The captain of a vessel takes his 
bearings, and makes an observation to know where he is. 
Now, young man, is it not well for you to ascertain precisely 
where you are, and where you stand on the question of 
drink ? Then I will ask you this question. You say you 
have no appetite for the drink. I say to you, just test it. 
I do not ask you to sign the pledge. I do not ask you to 
become a teetotaler ; but I ask you to test it when you want 
a glass of ale. What is that want ? It is a want created by 
the use of ale. If you had never drunk it, you would never 
want it. It is not a natural want. A boy never came into 



AN" UNNATUKAL APPETITE. 235 

the world longing for a glass of ale, any more than for a 
quid of tobacco. It is an acquired appetite. Now if you 
desire a glass of ale, as many of you will, or if you want one 
to-morrow morning, all I ask is — let it alone, and see how 
much you want it. Some of you will begin to argue the 
point : " Well, I am one of those who cannot do without a 
little; I really believe it is necessary for my constitution. 
I feel, as the old lady said, 'a certain-sort-of-goneness without 
it.' It is always upon me." Ah, there is the fallacy. You 
say you have no appetite for it. And you think that is so, 
because when the appetite craves, you gratify it and satisfy 
it for the time being. By and by, the appetite craves again. 
Now let it alone till you do not feel the want of it any more, 
and if you attempt that, some of you will find you have a 
difficult task to accomplish. It has a grip upon you, and 
you will find that you are one of the subjects of this craving. 
I will ask you another question. Do you not drink more 
now than you did five years ago ? Do you not take a glass 
of ale oftener than you did five years ago? Are you not 
increasing the quantity ? Some of you drink twice as much 
as you did five years ago, and you know it. You expect to 
live thirty years, or thirty-five years, longer. What will it 
be if you double your quantity every five years? If you 
drink more now than you did five years ago, it will be easier 
for you to give it up now than it ever will be again. All I 
ask of young men is to test the matter. 

There are those of us who have come out of the fire, who 
are scarred and bruised, who will never be what we might 
have been had it not been for the accursed drink. As year 
after year rolls on and brings us nearer and nearer to the 
end, what would we not give could we wipe out our record ! 
Oh, that awful record, young man ! You are writing a new 
record every day. You begin in the morning with a clean 



236 WHAT IS YOUR RECORD ? 

page, perfectly clean, and at night it is smeared, and smudged, 
and blotted, and then you hastily turn it over and think it is 
gone. No. You never can wipe out a word of your record ; 
you never can blot out a stain, nor erase one. No, sir! 
You are making an ineffaceable record. What a grand 
thing it is to be a young man, with all of life before you 
to make of it what you choose, to mould it as you will, to 
make it just what you please. How many are making their 
life a desert, when it might be a garden ; making it a dreary, 
barren waste when it might be fruitful in good works and 
holy influences, stumbling, blundering, aimless, almost re- 
minding you of the story of a boy walking through the 
streets with a couple of dogs. Some one said to him, 
"Where are those dogs going?" "I don't know," was 
the reply, " they have come in by the coach and have eaten 
their directions." These men positively look as if they had 
drunk their directions and did not know where they were 
going ; and their appearance would be absurd if it were not 
so deplorable to see them groping through life with no defi- 
nite purpose or fixed principle to direct their course. 

Oh, the beginning ! So many go into ruin with all of 
life before them. You are like a switchman on the rail- 
way. Here comes the locomotive and the train of cars 
freighted with human life, hopes, and happiness, and your 
hand is on that switch. You can turn that train on the 
main track, you can turn it on the siding, you can turn it 
down the bank; but when it has passed by, your control 
over it has gone forever. Never will you have another such 
opportunity, and opportunities are passing you day by day, 
day by day. By and by you will say, as poor Churchill did 
on. his death-bed, "All gone; every opportunity lost; what 
a fool I have been ! " 

Young man, is that to be the end of your life with all its 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 237 

prospects and all its bright hopes ? Now let me tell you this 
one thing : ninety-nine out of every hundred ruined men are 
ruined by strong drink. I do not mean ruined financially, 
for I do not consider that any ruin at all, because, when a 
man dies, it is not what he leaves or what he carries with 
him, but what is laid up there ! He may die so poor that the 
parish may have to bury him, but yonder is the crown of life 
"to him that overcometh." Now I say, young man, is that 
to be the end of it ? Ninety-nine out of every hundred men 
who are ruined morally, and I might almost say physically, 
intellectually, and religiously, are ruined by the use of drink. 
It is the great curse of this country. Then what shall we 
do ? What we want is to stir up the people to move in this 
matter. 

We want you to help us, young men. It may cost 
something, but life is a battlefield. Yes, it is. Oh, I 
like these fights. A man said to me once, " I never fought 
a battle in my life." Then I said, "Well, I pity you, if, 
among all the forces for evil in this world, none of them 
thought you worth the tackling." There are some, I sup- 
pose, who never fight battles, — quiet-tempered, easy going 
people, very sweet children. They have no emotional nature, 
no strong propensities ; they are good, negatively good, and 
when they reach the goal they are without a mark, smooth 
and sleek. And you praise these men. "Ah, that is the 
man for me ; see how smoothly he went through life." And 
the other one that started with him began to stumble and 
fall, and rose and fell again ; and when he reached the goal 
he was scarred and marred, and battered and bruised, and 
you despise him. Wiry? He came into the world with a 
fierce, passionate nature that needed one constant battle to 
control, and sometimes he fell. But he cried out, " Rejoice 
not against me, O mine enemy ; when I fall, I shall arise." I 



238 HONOR RETRIEVED. 

prefer the fighter to the man who never fights. All honor to 
the fighters ! Now, young men, for yourselves and for 
others, enter into this conflict. It is a grand one. 

An English regiment in India had its colors taken away 
for insubordination. Every man drew his rations and pay 
just as usual. No punishment of any sort was added. And 
yet every man in that regiment, whatever he might be, — 
possibly coarse, illiterate, or brutal, — and however lowered 
by his miserable mistakes, had an ideal sense of honor. 
Every man groaned and suffered under the chastisement of 
the loss of their flag. But the time came when a fort was 
to be stormed on the top of a steep hill. It was a perilous 
thing to charge up that long, cannon-swept ascent. But the 
opportunity was there. The commanding officer rode down 
the line in front of the disgraced regiment and said, 
" Attention, men ! your colors are on the top of that hill. 
Charge." And they did charge. Up that hill, under the 
fiery storm of shot and shell, through the abatis, over the 
rampart, into the fort, — a ghastly, battered, bleeding few, 
to receive their flag, — only a fragment of the regiment. 
The rest lay dead in heaps all up the slope; but they 
gave their lives gladly for such a thing as the honor of 
their regimental flag. 

Young men, your prize is higher and nobler than this. I 
leave the lesson with you. May you be able to say, though 
covered with scars in the conflict, " I have fought the good 
fight and obtained the victory, and the immortal crown is 
mine. " 



CHAPTER X. 

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE — THE PATHOS OF LIFE — 
CHILDREN BORN TO SIN AND SORROW. 

Tell-tale Scars — A Modern Life of Moses — Underrating the Capacity of 
Children — A Boy's Idea of How Flies are Made — "Puttin' on 'em To- 
gether, and a-Fittin' of 'em" — Saving Half Fare — "Only Ten, in the 
Cars " — A New Way to Sign the Pledge — A Father who Would not be 
Outdone by His Boy — A True Incident — What the Jug Contained — 
Value of Children's Aid — An Incident from My Own Experience — Cries 
of Distress — A Peep Over the Fence — A Triumphal Procession — What 
a Temperance Boy Accomplished — An Army Officer's Story — Charity 
Children — A Tour Through a Tenement House — What was Discovered 
Under the Rafters — A Dying Little Waif — Hiding from Father — 
Friendless and Motherless — An Affecting Scene — The Dying Boy's 
Hymn — Death in a Garret — Rest at Last — How a Minister Argued the 
Points — Convinced — God Bless the Children. 




T is a great work to save a 
drunkard. It is worth a 
life-effort to lift a man from 
degradation. It is worth a 
might}^ self-sacrifice to raise 
a man, and enable him to 
stand as a man free from his 
debasement and fetters ; but to pre- 
vent his fall is far better. 

A boy, when asked, " Would you 
tell a lie for fifty dollars?" replied, 
" No ; because when the dollars are 
gone, the lie will stick." Though we may reform a man 
from drunkenness, no one can ever fully recover from the 
effects of years of dissipation and intemperance. You put 
your hand in the hand of a giant, and he crushes it. You 

239 



240 CAPACITY OF CHILDREN. 

shriek in your agony, and by and by, with a desperate effort, 
you draw forth your hand. It is crushed and torn, mangled 
and bleeding. That hand may be at last healed, but it will 
be a mutilated hand as long as you live. And so a man may 
be cured of this evil of drunkenness, but the marks are upon 
him, and will be to the day of his death. Many a man in 
perfect health has a face fearfully marred and scarred from 
smallpox ; the disease has gone, but the marks remain. 
Therefore it is a more important work to prevent than it is 
to cure. 

Now, one would suppose there would be no opposition to 
this work. But there are some persons who oppose every- 
thing that does not suit their own narrow views, or that they 
have not suggested, and so there is opposition. The great 
objection seems to be that " these children are led and enticed 
to sign the pledge, without appealing to their understanding." 
We underrate the capacity of children to understand, — 
altogether underrate it. There is a kind of literature grow- 
ing out of an attempt to make the scripture narratives com- 
prehended by infant minds. You read the life of Jesus, the 
life of Moses, or the life of Joseph, to your boy of five years 
from the Bible ; and if he does not understand these narra- 
tives he will understand nothing. And yet we have namby- 
pamby editions of the life of Moses after this fashion : — 

" Moses was a very nice little darling love of a child, with 
blue eyes, and flaxen hair hanging over his shoulders, and 
little dimples on his knuckles, and the points of his fingers 
pink and beautiful ; and his mother loved her dear little 
darling child, and she found that bad men wanted to kill 
him; so she made a basket of bulrushes, and called it an 
ark, and lined it with something to keep the water out and 
cotton wool to make it soft and warm, and pushed it out into 
the stream ; and when the little child saw its mother stand- 



HOW FLIES ARE MADE. 



241 



ing on the bank, it stretched out its dimpled hands with 
the little pink finger-nails, and the mother began to cry — ." 
And all such nonsense as that. 

Sir Walter Scott once said, "It is all folly to talk of writing 
down to the capacity of children. Give them something to 
grasp after, and they will grasp that which will astonish 
you." We often hear shrewd remarks from children, and we 
call them "haphazard." But they are not. They are the 
result of a process of reasoning, and I want to give you one 
or two illustrations. 

I knew two boys very well, — at least, I 
knew their father very well. One of the boys 
was about ten years old. 
i|i His name was Willie, and 
the other, who was about six, 
was named Jamie. Jamie 
1 1 was seated on the doorstep 
% whittling a stick, as Yankee 
If boys do. Willie had caught 
a fly, and, holding it in his 
fingers, said : " What a queer 
thing a fly is, ain't it? Just 
(ji look at its legs. Look at its 
wings. When I blow him, 
he '11 buzz. Ain't" it queer ? 
T wonder how God made 
him." That has been a wonder to many. Professor Huxley 
cannot answer that question. No scientist can. " Jamie, 
how d' ye suppose God makes flies ? " The little fellow, 
whittling away at his stick, said : " Why, Willie, God don't 
make flies as carpenters make things, — puttin' on 'em 
together and afittin' of 'em. God says, 4 Let there be flies,' 
and then there is flies." Call that haphazard ? No. That 




x.„- - 

ain't it queer?" 



242 LITTLE MIMICS. 

boy had heard or read the sublime passage, " God said, Let 
there be light, and there was light ; " and thence he reasoned 
out the creative power of the Almighty. 

I say again, we underrate the capacity of children. We 
forget that they have imitative faculties. A boy, when asked 
his age by a railway conductor, said : " At home I 'm twelve; 
but mother says I'm only ten in the cars." I would not 
affirm that this is a general practice, but the frequency of 
such things is really suggestive. Conductors tell me that 
good-looking children, well-dressed children, educated chil- 
dren, are sometimes taught to lie for the sake of saving a 
half-fare on the railroad. 

Now, I ask, what is to be the honesty of the next genera- 
tion if this sort of thing is continued ? These children re- 
member, and we underrate their capacity to remember, and 
forget that they imitate. You do not wish to destroy the 
respect of a child for his father or his mother, do you? I 
glory in the boy who said : " I tell you what it is ; if my 
mother says a thing is so, it is so, even if it is not so." 
What a profound conviction that boy must have had of his 
mother's veracity ! 

One other illustration. A lady I knew, a godly woman 
whose husband was very profane, had a boy who was the 
light of her eyes, the pride of her heart. One day she heard 
him swear. She said to him, with her heart breaking ; " My 
boy, you said a very naughty word, and you must ask God 
to forgive you." Well, he was obedient to his mother, but 
was a little sulky at the idea of confession. She followed 
him to his room, and he knelt down and said, in a very sulky 
tone : " Oh, God, I 'm sorry I said that naughty word, and I 
hope you '11 forgive me, and I guess you will. But I want 
you to hurry and grow me up a man quick, so as I can swear 
like father does, and then you wouldn't care about my 



"I'LL TAKE WHAT FATHER TAKES." 243 

swearing." Let a father hear that from the lips of his child, 
and will he ever dare to utter a profane word in his hearing 
again? These children understand well enough. What 
effect will a father's precepts have upon a boy when he can 
say : " I wonder what makes father laugh and tell us how he 
ran away from school, and put wax on the schoolmaster's 
seat, and plagued the other boys, and then turn round and 
shut me up and whip me when I just tried to be as smart as 
he was ? " Ah, we underrate the capacity of the young to 
understand and remember. 

Rev. Charles Garratt, I believe, tells us that a little fellow 
of thirteen years of age sat at the table with his father. The 
waiter came round and asked him what he would take. 
There was wine on the table. " What will you take ? " 
"I '11 take what father takes." The father had the decanter 
in his hand, just about to pour out the wine, and he dropped 
it as if it were fire. Laying his hand lovingly on the head 
of the boy, he said : " Waiter, I '11 take water." Now, this 
is what we want, — that fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, 
and all who have influence with children shall help us in 
inspiring them with a hatred of that which never benefited 
a human being, and has brought many to destruction and 
perdition. 

I know people tell us sometimes : " It is no use working 
among children ; it is no use laboring with them. They do 
not understand what they are doing, have no idea what they 
are about. They will sign your pledge, and belong to your 
band of hope, and then they will break the pledge by and 
by." Why do you not raise the same objection against your 
Sunday schools ? You cannot make all your Sunday scholars 
Christians, can you ? But there is a large proportion of them 
who do come into the church. And there is a large propor- 
tion of those who adopt the principle and join these bands of 



244 A CHILD'S INFLUENCE. 

hope, and sign the pledge of total abstinence, who do keep 
it, for I meet them by scores almost every week of my life. 

A gentleman in the city of Boston, who was in the habit 
of using wine, was asked by one of his promising boys if he 
might go to one of our meetings. " Yes, my boy, you may 
go, but you must not sign the pledge." Now, in our cold- 
water army we don't allow the children to sign the pledge 
without the consent of their parents. We believe the boy's 
first duty is to obey his father and mother. Well, the boy 
came ; he was a noble little fellow, full of fire and life and 
ingenuousness. We sang and sang, and the chorus of one of 
the songs was shouted by the children ; — 

" Cheer up my lively lads, 
In spite of rum and cider; 
Cheer up, my lively lads, 
We've signed the pledge together." 

We sung it several times, and the little fellow I speak of 
sung it too. As he was walking home, however, the thought 
struck him that he had been singing what was not true : 
" We have signed the pledge together ; " he had not signed 
the pledge. When he reached home he sat down at the 
table, and on it was a jug of cider. " Jem," says one of his 
brothers, " Will you have some cider ? " 

" No, thank you," was the reply. 

« Why not ? Don't you like it ? " 

" Yes, I like it, but I 'm never going to drink any more 
cider ; nothing that is intoxicating for me." 

" My boy," said his father, " you have not disobeyed me, 
— you have not signed the pledge ? " 

" No, father," said he, sobbing, " I have not signed the 
pledge, but I 've sung it, and that 's enough for me." 

That father come up to the temperance meeting, at 
which three thousand people were assembled, and told the 



THE BEER MOTHER MAKES.' 



245 



story, and said : " I '11 not be outdone by my boy ; though I 
have not sung the pledge I will sign it." He did so, and is 
at the present day one of the truest and noblest supporters 
of the cause. Now, I like to see conscientiousness, and 
children are conscientious before they become warped and 
stultified by contact with the world ; and if we can bring 
them to the right point at starting, we may feel assured they 
will go on, by God's grace, to a glorious consummation. 

Some persons say : " What is the use of let- 
ting a child of six or seven years old sign the 
pledge ? They don't understand it." Now, 
children under- 
stand a great deal 
more than we give 
them credit for. 
They do under- 
stand what is 
meant by the 
pledge and by 
temperance, and 
they understand, 
and often use, the 
arguments. I was 

once engaged in forming a cold-water army at Bangor, and a 
boy said to me, " If I sign the pledge, may I drink cider and 
the beer mother makes?" Now, I knew that what he called 
the beer made by his mother was a drink which was not 
intoxicating; so I said he might drink that, but cider, — 
no. " Oh, well, I like cider," said he, and away he went. 
Other boys joined him, and they talked earnestly together. 
Presently he came back and said : " I '11 put my name down, 
I '11 sign." 

A gentleman in Virginia had a boy six or seven years old, 




I'LL NOT BE OUTDONE BY MY BOY.' 



246 A CAISDID REPLY. 

who wanted to sign the pledge ; all in the family had done so, 
but the father thought him too young and would not permit 
him. At last, however, after much entreaty, permission was 
given. Soon after, the father went on a journey. At one 
stopping-place, away from a town, he called for some water. 
It did not come, so he called again ; still he could not get it, 
but cider was brought instead, and, being very thirsty, he 
drank that. When he returned home he related the circum- 
stance. After he had finished, the little boy came up to his 
knee with his eyes full of tears, and he said, " Father, how far 
were you from James River when you drank the cider ? " 
"Rather more than fifteen miles, my boy." "Well," said the 
little fellow, sobbing, " I 'd have walked to James River and 
back again rather than have broken my pledge." God bless 
the children ! We have thousands such as these ; children 
who understand the principle and keep to the practice. I 
sometimes wish the adults kept the pledge as well as the boys 
do. I said just now that the children understand the argu- 
ments. A lady who kept a school told me that when she 
was teaching spelling in a class, they came one day to the 
word "jug." "What," she asked, "do people put in a jug." 
"Rum," said a boy. "I hope," said the lady, "none of you 
know anything of rum." "I do," said the boy; "my father 
drinks it, and I like it." At the recess, the other children 
gathered round that boy, and argued with such force that at 
last, as many older than he have done, he backed against a 
wall and said, " I don't care if it is so ; I don't care if you are 
right." They do understand the argument. 

Children may be made glorious coadjutors in the ranks. 
The children in our country have been exerting an in- 
fluence outside of their armies ; they know well what is 
meant by sympathy and benevolence. We have taught them 
that a drunkard is a man ; although he is poor, miserable, 



POWER OF SYMPATHY. 247 

and debased, and although he sometimes frightens them, yet 
that he is a man, and was once a boy as pure and bright as 
the} r ; therefore we teach the children that they should have 
sympathy with a drunkard who has a man's heart and sensi- 
bility. I have approached the most hardened wretches, and 
have spoken to them in tones of kindness and sympathy ; and, 
although the eye was bleared and bloodshot, yet I could see 
the crystal drops welling up and falling down the bloated 
face. One man, I remember, lifted his hands, and said, " I 
did n't know I had a friend in the world." No power on earth 
is so debasing to a man as the power of drink, but we have 
taught the children to look upon the intemperate as human 
beings. 

On one occasion I was walking at the end of a procession. 
The band was playing, banners were waving, the girls wore 
medals, and the boys were shouting " Hurrah for cold water ! " 
when I heard a sound of crying, which seemed to proceed 
from a field we were passing. I looked over the bars, and 
there I saw a little, scantily-dressed boy on his knees, rub- 
bing his eyes, and crying most piteously. I said, " What is 
the matter, my boy ? " " My father won't let me go with the 
procession." "Do you want to go, then?" "Yes, but my 
father won't let me ; may I go ? " " No, you must not if 
your father says you must not." I left him there and walked 
to the place where the procession had assembled. In address- 
ing the children I told them what I had witnessed, and 
observed how happy and grateful they ought to be that they 
were allowed to take part in so joyful a scene. I continued 
in this strain for a little time, when a man pushed his way 
through the crowd up to the platform, and said, " Have you 
a pledge? " " Yes." " I '11 put my name down on it." Then 
facing the children, he said, " That boy is my boy, and I told 
him this morning that he should not come up here ; but I am 



248 



A HAPPY SCENE. 



willing that he should come now if you will have him." 
"Have him?" shouted every boy, "we'll have him;" and 
away some scores of them started down the hill. I never 
saw boys run so before in my life, and presently they were 




A PEEP OVER THE FENCE. 



seen escorting the little boy in triumph to the place where we 
were. There they shook hands with him, and nothing would 
satisfy them but he must be lifted to the platform. There he 
stood, twisting his old straw hat in his fingers, completely 
bewildered. A little girl put a medal round his neck, and all 



A.N ARMY OFFICER'S STORY. 249 

shouted "Hurrah!" It is always encouraging to speak to 
the children, because they understand and are conscientious. 
I have one little fact to relate on the subject of children's 
usefulness. Children can be useful by consistency, consci- 
entious consistency. I was on my way to Canada once, and, 
while on the St. Lawrence, a gentleman who was one of a very 
pleasant party of passengers came to me and said, " Mr. Gough, 
I believe." " Yes, sir, my name is Gough." " You probably 

do not know me ; I am Captain , of the Rifle Brigade. 

Do you remember, when you were lecturing at Niagara, a 
gentleman in uniform passed the pledge ? " I said that I did 
distinctly. " Well, I am the man. When you appealed to 
the people to adopt the principle of total abstinence, I hap- 
pened to be present in uniform, and, to encourage others, I 
undertook the task I have mentioned. My boy signed that 
pledge, and on coming home he said, 4 Papa, I have signed 
the pledge; will you help me keep it?' 'Certainly,' I said. 
4 Well, I have brought home a copy of the pledge, will you 
sign it ? ' ' Nonsense, nonsense, my child ; what could I do 
when my brother officers called, if I was a teetotaler ? ' 4 But 
do try, papa.' ' Tut, tut, why you are quite a little radical.' 
1 Well, you won't ask me to pass the bottle ? ' 4 You are quite 
a fanatic, my child ; but I promise not to ask you to touch it.' 
Six weeks after that, two officers came in to spend the 
evening. ' What have you to drink ? ' said they ; ' have you 
any more of that prime Scotch ale ? ' 4 No,' I said, ' I have 
not, but I will get some. Here, Willy, run to the canteen, 
and tell them to give you some bottles of ale, and bring them 
at once.' The boy stood there respectfully, but did not go. 
4 Come, Willy ; why, what 's the matter ? Come, run along.' 
He went, but came back presently without the ale. ' Where 's 
the ale, Willy?' 4 I asked them for it, papa, at the canteen, 
and they put it upon the counter, but I could not touch it. 
16 



250 A FATHER SAYED BY HIS SON". 

O papa, don't be angry ; I told them to send it up, but I 
could not touch it myself.' I could not but feel deeply 
moved. I said, ' Gentlemen, you hear that ? You can do as 
you please ; when the ale comes you may drink it, but not 
another drop after that shall be drunk in my house, and not 
another drop shall pass my tongue. Willy, have you your 
temperance pledge? • ' O papa, I have.' 4 Bring it then,' and 
the boy was back with it in a moment. I signed it, and the 
little fellow clung round my neck in a frenzy of delight." 

That officer is now one of the most self-denying advocates 
the temperance cause possesses, doing more good than any 
half-dozen men in his regiment. It cost him something to 
become a teetotaler. He met at first with ridicule, but, as he 
said to me : "I have the best of it. Sometimes after a mess- 
dinner they will rub their heads, and I will say, tapping my 
forehead, 'Ah, perfectly clear, perfectly clear,' and they will 
reply, 4 Well, captain, you certainly have the best of it.' " 

These children are very impressible. A friend of mine, 
seeking for objects of charity, reached the upper room of a 
tenement house. It was vacant. He saw a ladder pushed 
through a hole in the ceiling. Thinking that perhaps some 
poor creature had crept up there, he climbed the ladder, drew 
himself through the hole, and found himself under the rafters. 
There was no light but that which came through a bull's-eye 
in the place of a tile. Soon he saw a heap of chips and shav- 
ings, and on them lay a boy about ten years old. 

" Boy, what are you doing here ? " 

"Hush, don't tell anybody, please, sir." 

" What are you doing here ? " 

" Hush, please don't tell anybody, sir ; I 'm abiding;" 

" What are you hiding for ? " 

" Don't tell anybody, please, sir." 

"Where 's your mother?" 



AN AFFECTING SCENE. 251 

" Please, sir, mother 's dead." 

" Where 's your father ? " 

"Hush, don't tell him. But look here." He turned him- 
self on his face, and through the rags of his jacket and shirt 
my friend saw that the boy's flesh was terribly bruised and 
his skin was broken. 

"Why, my boy, who beat you like that?" 

" Father did, sir." 

" What did he beat you for?" 

" Father got drunk, sir, and beat me 'cos I would n't steal." 

"Did you ever steal?" 

"Yes, sir; I was a street-thief once." 

" And why won't you steal any more ? " 

" Please, sir, I went to the mission school, and they told 
me there of God and of heaven and of Jesus, and they taught 
me, ' Thou shalt not steal,' and I '11 never steal again, if my 
father kills me for it. But please don't tell him." 

"My boy, you must n't stay here. You'll die. Now you 
wait patiently here for a little time. I 'hi going away to see 
a lady. We will get a better place for you than this." 

" Thank you, sir ; but please, sir, would you like to hear 
me sing my little hymn ? " 

Bruised, battered, forlorn, friendless, motherless, hiding 
from an infuriated father, he had a little hymn to sing. 

" Yes, I will hear you sing your little hymn." 

He raised himself on his elbow and then sang : — 

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 
Look upon a little child, 
Pity my simplicity, 
Suffer me to come to thee. 

"Fain would I to thee be brought, 
Gracious Lord, forbid it not : 
In the kingdom of thy grace, 
Give a little child a place." 

"That 's the little hymn, sir. Good-by." 



252 LABORING FOR POSTERITY. 

The gentleman hurried away for restoratives and help, 
came back again in less than two hours, and climbed the 
ladder. There were the chips, there were the shavings, and 
there was the little motherless boy with one hand by his side 
and the other tucked in his bosom — dead. Oh, I thank God 
that he who said, " Suffer little children to come unto me," 
did not say "respectable children," or "well-educated chil- 
dren." No, he sends his angels into the homes of poverty 
and sin and crime where you do not like to go, and brings 
out his redeemed ones, and they are as stars in the crown of 
rejoicing to those who have been instrumental in enlighten- 
ing their darkness. 

A gentleman told me that once, when speaking at a place, 
he said : " Ladies and gentlemen, we are not laboring for 
ourselves, but for posterity. Posterity will come and ask 
you, 'What have you done for us?'" Fifteen years after- 
wards, he went to the same place to speak again, and he 
observed children present of various ages, — fifteen, fourteen, 
ten. He remembered what he had said on the previous 
occasion, and in addressing the audience he observed: "La- 
dies and gentlemen, fifteen years ago I said we were not 
laboring for ourselves, but for posterity ; and posterity would 
come and ask us what we had done. Posterity has come. 
They are here to-day. What have you done for them in the 
last fifteen years?" What will you do in the next fifteen 
years for those who are now coming up? We ask you, 
parents, to give the subject your serious, prayerful consid- 
eration. I would not use any argument to make people tee- 
totalers that were not honest, if I knew it. I have tried, as 
far as I am able, to elevate our standard, to keep it from 
trailing in the dust, and not to make our principles a matter 
of bargain. 

An Independent minister walked from Stroud to Ciren- 



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GOD BLESS THE CHILDREN". 255 

cester to hear me speak. He says the arguments used af- 
fected him deeply. I had said, " I wish a man to sign the 
pledge if it is right to do so ; if it is wrong, let it alone ; but 
be sure you are right, and if a man refuses to join, let him 
have a reason he is not ashamed of, — one that is satisfactory 
to him when he kneels down and asks God for a blessing ; 
let it be a reason he will be satisfied with when in his best 
moods ; one which will satisfy him at the last of his life ; a 
reason he is willing should meet him on that day when he 
receives the reward for the deeds done in the body." This 
minister told me he argued the point with himself the whole 
twelve miles home, arguing as if for life, stopping on the 
road and thrusting his stick into the ground, bringing every 
reason forward and carefully examining it. He came to the 
conclusion that he had not a reason against total absti- 
nence which would stand the test of judgment. The next 
morning he signed the pledge and was ready to work with 
us. Have a reason. The hope of our temperance enterprise 
is the children, and again I say, " God bless the children and 
save them from the influences that are degrading to so many 
thousands." If we can save the children, the day of triumph 
will soon draw near. Will you help us? Help us for the 
sake of your own children and the children of others, that 
these may be saved from the power and influence of intem- 
perance. 



CHAPTER XL 



MY POSITION DEFINED — REASON AND REVELATION 
CURTAIN LIETED — TALES OF THE FALLEN. 



THE 



A Titled Toll-Man — Learning versus Common Sense — Our Standpoint — 
An Actor with a Proud Record — Incidents of my Visit to Califor- 
nia — " Help Me Out of This Hell " — A Cry of Agony — " Drink 's My 
Curse " — Lifting the Curtain — Secrets of the Charnel House — My Inter- 
view with a Physician — " It 's No Use, I 'in a Lost Laddie, Good-by " — 
A Clergyman's Sad Downfall — Employed as a Hostler in a Stable — 
"You Know Who I Am, Go Away from Me "—"Lost! Lost! LOST!" 
— An Explorer's Testimony — An Interesting Narrative — A Campaign 
Full of Hardship and Danger — Soldiers Without Grog — What they 
Endured — Sir Henry Havelock's Report — Storming a Fortress after a 
March of Forty Miles — Sitting on a Hornet's Nest — A Boy's Com- 
position on a Pin — Stimulus not Strength. 




E know some persons con- 
sider it a condescension to 
patronize us, but a good 
enterprise patronizes every 
human being that thorough- 
ly engages in it ; there is no 
stooping in the matter. 
Every man, I do not care 
who he is, who will sign the temper- 
ance pledge for the benefit of his 
brother, takes a step upwards. We 
cannot stoop in doing a good work. 
Do you think the Duke of Buccleuch has taken a step down, 
because, in order to prevent drink being sold in the toll- 
houses on his large estate, he has taken those toll-houses into 
his own hands, and on every toll-gate has had painted: 
256 



A GRAND AND NOBLE ENTERPRISE. 257 

" Walter Scott, Duke of Buccleuch, toll-man ? " Do you 
suppose he lowered himself in becoming a toll-man for the 
sake of his neighbors, his tenants, and the community at 
large? He never took a higher step in his life. 

There is grandeur and nobility about our enterprise. 
Men call it tame and commonplace. It forms a grand epic 
poem such as the world has never read, and has not the 
faculty to read to-day, of struggle, sorrow, degradation, 
triumph, and victory, with the assurance that, in the end, 
right will triumph and sit upon the throne, and the wrong 
shall be overthrown. Then let us stand by the right. And 
we claim that we are right when we define our position by 
declaring that total abstinence is lawful. A gentleman said 
to me, "The Bible is against you." "Oh, no," I replied. 
"Well, you have no command in the Bible to abstain." 
"Don't want one." I do not go to the Bible to find a 
command, " Thou shalt abstain from intoxicating liquors." 
I do not seek for a command in the Bible to abstain from 
gambling, horse-racing, prize-fighting, dog-fighting, cock-fight- 
ing, and all that sort of thing. As a Christian man, I abstain 
from these things, believing them to be detrimental to the 
best interests of society ; and because I am a Christian it is 
not only lawful for me to do so, but an absolute duty. I 
give to these men all they claim. I am not a learned man. 
I do not understand Hebrew or Greek. Show me Hebrew 
words and Greek words and they are all Greek to me. But I 
have found out this : If a man is right according to the com- 
mon sense God has given him, he can stand his ground if he 
does not go out of his depth. 

If I should pretend to deliver a physiological lecture, 
knowing nothing of the science, and should attempt to 
learnedly discuss the effects of drink on the nervous system, 
the brain, or on the tissues, I might be floored by a few hard 



258 MY POSITION DEFINED. 

words that I do not understand. My opponent may be 
wrong and I may be right; I get the kicks and he gets 
the sympathy, because I go out of my depth and attempt 
to argue the point beyond my knowledge. There are men 
who have talked about the meaning of tirosh, and yayin and 
oinos, and other learned words, men who did not understand 
them, and who discoursed about the wines of Scripture, when 
an educated man could upset them in five minutes. 

Well, "the Bible permits the use of wine." "Yes." 
" Approves it." " Yes." " Our Saviour made wine." 
"Yes." "He drank wine." "Yes." "It is lawful to 
drink wine." "Yes; what more do you want?" We will 
grant you, if you demand it, that the Bible permits, sanc- 
tions, and approves its use, that the Saviour made it, and it 
is lawful to use it. I will give you all that, but I want to 
say, in defining my position, that every man who brings the 
Bible to sustain him in the use of drink must accept the 
Bible as a rule of faith and practice ; for it is mean, sneaking, 
cowardly, and contemptible to search the Bible for permis- 
sion to gratify a propensity, and then reject all God's require- 
ments. I speak of the Bible argument to Bible believers 
and Bible lovers. I give them all they ask, and now I define 
my position in reply. With my views of Christianity and 
its claims upon me, by my allegiance to God, by my faith in 
Christ, by the vows I took upon myself in His presence and 
before His people, I am bound to give up a lawful gratifica- 
tion, if, by so doing, my example will save a weaker brother 
from falling into sin. That is my position ; can you take 
that away from me ? I will hold it, and take my stand upon 
it in the day of judgment. 

My principle, then, — judged from the Bible standpoint, — 
is a lawful one. I say again, I do not search the Bible for a 
command. I seek in the Bible reverently for a permission, 



CHRISTIANITY AND TEMPERANCE. 259 

and if I find there a permission to abstain, I act upon it as if 
it were a command, in view of the evil of drunkenness and 
that which promotes and perpetuates it. 

Some persons will ask us, again : " What do you expect 
to do with total abstinence? You do not expect by it to 
make men Christians, do you?" Oh, no. We have our 
gospel temperance associations, I know; but we do not 
expect that every man who signs the total abstinence pledge 
is to be at once a Christian. We cannot make men Chris- 
tians ; no minister — however holy his life and earnest his 
preaching — can do that. When the disciples failed to cast 
the devil out of the boy while the Saviour was in the moun- 
tain, they told Jesus, and he said, "Bring him to me." Now, 
if my principle is a lawful one, and by it I can remove the 
hindrance to a man's hearing the truth, and be indirectly the 
means of bringing him to the Saviour, I demand the sym- 
pathy of those who love the Saviour. We ask your sympathy 
and co-operation. It has done this work, will do it, is doing 
it day by day. Some tell us : "You are doing nothing more." 
We do not profess to do anything more. It is true we can- 
not say to a man : " You cannot stop drinking unless you 
become a Christian," because he can. I have known men 
who are not Christians, who have been abstainers twenty 
years. We do not go to a man and say, " If you do not be- 
come a Christian you cannot stop lying ; if you do not become 
a Christian you cannot stop swearing ; if you do not become 
a Christian you cannot stop thieving ; if you do not become a 
Christian you cannot stop drinking." 

I have more than once defined my position on this point, 
that the only absolute safety for a man who would reform 
from drunkenness or any other sin is a determined will and 
the grace of God ; all else is a risk. 

Our principle of total abstinence, then, is a lawful prin- 



260 



AN ACTOR'S STORY. 



ciple. It is also a sensible principle. Can you find me a 
man who will say : " I am sixty years of age, and I never 
drank a drop of intoxicating liquor, and I regret that I did 
not learn to drink it when I was a young man?" Find me 
such a man anywhere. When I was in California, a gentle- 
man who was attached to a theatre called upon me, and said : 
" I am no reformer. It is not in my line. 
Sunday-schools and temperance societies 
are very well in their way, but they are 
not in my line. I have been an actor 
since I was eighteen years of age, and I am 
now forty-two, and I never drank a 
drop of intoxicating liquor in my 
life. What do you think of that ? 
I am proud of it myself." 
He was no " howling dervish 
of a temperance lecturer." 
He cared but little for the ab- 
stract principle, but as to the 
fact of his own total absti- 
nence he said, " I 'm proud of 
it." Yet there were men who 
came to me in that city by the 
score, — I say it within bounds, — one of them the son of a 
well-known lawyer in New York, who, as he grovelled at my 
feet and clasped my hands, said : " For the love of God, help 
me out of this hell!" "What's the matter with you?" 
"Drink's my curse ! " Yes, that's it. It comes from the 
prison, " Drink 's my curse ! " It comes from your houses of 
correction, " Drink 's my curse ! " It comes echoing from the 
lunatic asylum, " Drink 's my curse ! " It comes from the 
pale-faced wife and the starving children, "Drink's my 
curse ! " It comes hissing hot through the black lips of the 




drink's my curse.' 



"DRINK'S MY CURSE.' 



261 



dying drunkard, "Drink 's my curse ! " And not a man who 
has escaped but to-day rejoices in the fact of his escape. 

Look at the wrecks of men to be seen on every hand. Oh, 
young men, I wish I could lift the curtain that conceals from 
your view the secrets of this charnel-house. A man about 
forty years of age, a graduate of Edinburgh University, 
came to me and showed me his diploma as a physician. 
He was a fluent linguist and a very cultivated gentleman, 




YOU KNOW WHO I AM. 



but the mark was 

upon him. I was 

with him some time, and 

when he left me he said, 

" I am very much obliged 

to you, Mr. Gough; you 

have told me the truth, but 

it 's no use. There 's no help for me. Will you shake hands 

with me ? I 'm a lost laddie ; good-by." 

How many lost laddies are there to-day! Lost! lost! 
A living man lost ! Yes. It 's an awful sight to see a living 
man a lost man, and there are such. Lost ! lost! lost ! I knelt 
at the family altar with a doctor of divinity in New England, 
in 1852. He was the pastor of a large church. To-day he 
is a drunkard, and employed as a hostler in a stable. At one 
time it was decided to visit him, and a committee of Christian 
men was appointed to see him. What was the result? " Go 



262 LOST! LOST! LOST! 

away from me ! You know who I am ; you know what I 
am ; you know what I have been. Go away from me. The 
doctor prescribed liquor in order to save my life, but he has 
damned my soul. Go away from me." 

Lost ! Lost ! Lost ! And there are men who are becoming 
lost to-day, going across that line which, if they cross it, 
leaves them but little hope. It is horrible to note the results 
of the drink, and yet observe men stepping forward to fill 
up the ranks as death mows others down. It is fearful, it is 
pitiful, to see such results, and no possible good to be derived 
from the use of that which directly produces them. 

"We oppose the employment of intoxicating liquor as a 
beverage because it is utterly useless as such ; no man is 
benefited by the use of it, either morally, physically, or intel- 
lectually. I know some are prepared to doubt it. They say, 
"Ah, there is a good in it." I should like to know what 
good. You cannot bring me a man who, by the use of the 
drink as a beverage, has been in any degree benefited. 

But some men say, " I can do more work under the influ- 
ence of drink, you know, than I can do without it." Some of 
our agricultural laborers say they can go through a harder day's 
work at haying, and some say they can lift heavier loads and 
endure more fatigue, with it than they can without it. 
Very well ; perhaps they can for the time being, but we have 
evidence upon evidence to prove that this is a fallacy in the 
end. Lieutenant Lynch, who went on an exploring expe- 
dition to the Dead Sea, says : — 

" I took with me twelve sailors ; I obtained from them a 
promise — a pledge — that they would use no intoxicating liquor 
as a beverage. After enduring fatigue such as seldom falls 
to the lot even of explorers, I have brought them all back 
again, safe and sound and in good health; and I believe 
I owe it to their abstinence from all intoxicating drinks." 



TESTIMONY OF MEDICAL EXPEKTS. 263 

A man may be able to do a little more work with stimulus 
than he could do without it, but every man who does it in 
that way, whether on the platform, in the workshop, at the 
bar, or in the pulpit, does it to the injury of his constitution. 

Sir William Gull said that he would deny the proposition 
that intellectual work cannot be half so well done without 
wine or alcohol, and that he would hold the opposite. Dr. 
Richardson, in his examination before the Lords' committee, 
1878, said that "if all the alcoholic liquor in the world could 
be tapped, let flow, and disappear, the world would be much 
better ; we should be stronger and healthier, the spirits more 
regular, and life would be lengthened." 

Lieutenant-Colonel Wakefield, speaking in reference to 
the troops in India during the war, says : — 

"Among other places we had to take was a very strong 
place called Ghuznee ; we had to blow in the gate, and we 
lost a good number of men. I am now speaking of a circum- 
stance that has often been mentioned, but still I like to men- 
tion it because it proves the truth of my arguments. The 
men, after entering the place, spread to the right and left. Of 
course — as is always given on these occasions — the order 
was, ' Do not commit any outrage ; ' but I tell you plainly 
that they just care as much for their officers as they do for 
anybody else, and I tell you what they will do. If their 
officers speak to them, they will club their muskets and say, 
4 You hold your jaw.' Not so at Ghuznee. Although under 
fire from the houses, they received their orders from the offi- 
cers not to fire. Not one of them did, and there was not an 
outrage committed in Ghuznee, there was not a woman or 
child maltreated, there was not a single complaint. I am 
sure you all feel and understand what the noble character of 
the Englishman is when he is sober. What is it? Why a 
man that would not hurt or harm anything except in the 



264 SOLDIERS WITHOUT GROG. 

service of his queen and country ; and it was illustrated here. 
Here were perfectly sober men. Havelock wrote in raptures 
to the Foreign and Home Temperance Society. He says, 'It 
gives me immense pleasure to tell you that Ghuznee was 
taken by perfectly sober men.' Was not this a picture of 
what is called sobriety. 

" Time rolled on ; our forces had to undergo all sorts of 
vicissitudes, a climate of extreme heat in summer and of 
extreme cold in winter : the commissariat could not reach 
them from Bengal, for they had to go right through the 
whole of the Punjaub, and up those passes which were con- 
stantly filled with hostile tribes. The consequence was that 
half the men in the regiments were without shoes or coats ; 
they got what they called the ' posteen ' or sheepskin dress 
of the country. They wore these sheepskins. I merely 
mention all this to show you the privations they had to 
undergo. They had to sleep on the ground and to march 
through snow at one time and under a blazing sun at 
another, that would take the skin off your face before you 
can think of it ; they did it all on cold water. 

" Now comes the painful part of my story. The wise 
men of those days — I hope we shall never have such another 
generation — began to say, ' Oh, but the poor soldier is 
without his grog ; we must send him some grog ! ' The 
governor-general, who, of course, is the greatest man in all 
India, very soon writes to the commissariat, and says, ' Make 
arrangements to send fourteen hundred camel-loads of rum 
into Afghanistan.' What was the consequence ? From that 
day there were courts-martial, from that day men were 
guilty of striking their officers in the execution of their 
duty — coming under the frightful lash — coming under 
sentence of transportation for life, just for one act of passion, 
simply arising from drink, which they never would have 



AN ILLUSTRIOUS GARRISON. 265 

done if they had been sober. I never knew a thing that 
convinced the officers of the army I belonged to of the truth 
of Havelock's 'crotchet,' as they called it. They said, 4 It is 
a wondrous crotchet ! There is a great deal of truth in it.' 
After they had seen the army sober for eight months, with 
the greatest freedom from crime, the officers not constantly 
in their regimentals sitting on courts-martial, trying their 
men ; then comes in the liquor and the old story, — I say 
they had overwhelming proof, and I will defy any man to 
overcome it ; it is stronger than an axiom of Euclid, it is as 
plain as a post, that sobriety and this 'abstinence question' 
was tried there and tested. 

" Well, now, you must know that when part of this force 
was besieged in a place called Jellalabad, the garrison of 
which, you know, stood out for some months under every kind 
of privation. There were five hundred men told off daily 
for working with spades to raise bastions around the place, 
and repair the walls. Government gave them the name of 
the ' illustrious garrison,' in consequence of their bearing all 
the extremes of hunger and deprivation, and of their exploits 
both in the open field and in the defence of the place. My 
good friends, the whole of that garrison were upon cold 
water. They did their work like men ; they worked all day, 
and they sometimes got only half, sometimes only quarter 
rations ; they were in the ruddiest health ; they were hungry 
men, but, blessed be God, they were never drunken men." 
Here is Sir Henry Havelock's account of it: — 
"Without fear of contradiction it may be asserted that 
not only has the amount of the laborious work they have 
completed without this factitious aid been surprising, but 
the state and the garrison have gained full one third in 
manual exertion by their entire sobriety. Every hand has 
been constantly employed with the shovel and pickaxe. If 



266 SIR HENRY HAVELOCK'S TESTIMONY. 

there had been a spirit ration, one third of the labor would 
have been diminished in consequence of soldiers becoming 
the inmates of the hospital and guard-houses, or coming to 
their work with fevered brain and trembling hand, or sulky 
and disaffected after the protracted debauch. Now all is 
health, cheerfulness, industry, and resolution. 

"The energy with which our troops labored in restor- 
ing the defences exceeds all calculation, and beggars all 
commendation. They worked like men struggling for their 
existence, but with as much cheerfulness and good humor 
as industry and perseverance. They had no rum to para- 
lyze their nerves, sour their tempers, or predispose them to 
idleness or sullen discontent. A long course of sobriety 
and labor had made men of mere boys of recruits, and 
brought the almost raw levy, which formed two thirds of the 
array of the 13th light infantry, to the firm standard of the 
Roman discipline. They are now instructed to entrench 
themselves nightly, as well as to fight a battle every day. 

"It has been proved that the troops can make forced 
marches of forty miles, and storm a fortress in forty-five 
minutes, without the aid of rum, behaving, after success, 
with a forbearance and humanity unparalleled in history. 
Let it not henceforth be argued that distilled spirits are an 
indispensable portion of a soldier's ration." 

Dr. Richardson, Sir William Gull, Sir Henry Thompson, 
and other eminent physicians deal with this question on 
scientific grounds. Now I know nothing about scientific 
grounds ; I cannot explain to the people how alcohol affects 
the system, affects the stomach, or affects the blood ; I am 
ignorant of that, but we are glad to have other people tell 
us. But when they have moulded the nail and put it in the 
place where it is to go, we may be able to come up and hit it 
and help drive it where it should be. We ignorant and 



A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION. 



267 



illiterate people go among what are called the common 
classes with our common notions, and once in a while a 
common man may affect a common mind by a very common- 
place illustration. I once heard a man affect an audience 
wonderfully by what he said. Dr. Richardson would have 
put it in much better shape, but the man did a good work by 
his method of putting the point. He said : — 

"They tell us that alcohol gives 
strength and nourishment. Now it 
not ; it gives stimulus." 

"But," says his opponent, 
"there can be no stimulus with- 
out some nourishment." 

His reply was, " You sit down 
on a hornet's nest, and it 's very 
quickening, but it is not nourish- 
ing." 

When we do not understand 
the science of the question, 
we are forced to use common 
illustrations ; I give you another 
as a specimen. A man once said 
to a friend of mine, — 

" You are fighting whiskey ; 
whiskey has done a great deal of good; why, whiskey has 
saved a great many lives." 

My friend said, "What do you mean?" 

" Why," said the man, " I mean that whiskey has saved a 
great many lives." 

"Well," said my friend, "you remind me of a composi- 
tion a boy wrote on the subject of a pin. 

" ; A pin is a very queer sort of a thing. It has a round 
head and a sharp point ; and if you stick pins into you, they 




STIMULUS. 



268 ^ INTERESTING COMPOSITION. 

hurts. Women use pins to pin on their cuffs and collars, and 
men use pins when the buttons is off. You can get pins for 
five cents a paper ; but if you swallow them, they will kill 
you ; but they have saved thousands of lives.' 

" The teacher said : ' Why, Thomas, what do you mean by 
that ? ' Said the boy : ' By people not swallo win' of 'em.' " 

I say there is no good in intoxicating liquors as a bever- 
age. "Yes, but," say some, "I know better than that." 
Once when I was crossing the Atlantic in the steamship 
" America," a person on board, who called himself a gentle- 
man, I suppose, tried to insult me ; but such a man never 
can insult me, and so he failed. " What ! " said he, " going 
to Great Britain to tell the Englishman that he must give up 
his beer! Why, beer is the life of an Englishman." I 
thought to myself, "What a beery sort of existence that 
must be." But some say, " I can do better with beer than 
without it." I doubt it. Have you ever tried long enough^ 
Remember that in every one hundred gallons of beer there 
are ninety-one and a half gallons of water, and five gallons 
of alcohol. So far you have water and poison ; there is no 
nutriment yet ; about three gallons of what is called extrac- 
tive is all the nourishment you can obtain. If you boil a 
gallon of beer, you will find all the nourishment sticking to 
the bottom of ,the kettle ; and a nice-looking mess it is, too. 
Baron Liebig says that if a man drinks eight quarts of the 
strongest ale per day, he gets as much nourishment as there 
is in the flour which you can hold on the point of a knife ; 
and if he drinks that quantity every day in the year, he will 
get as much nourishment as there is in a five-pound loaf of 
bread or about three pounds of meat. But a man may say : 
" I can do more work under the influence of the beer than 
without it." You may. A man under the influence of 
stimulants may lift more than at other times ; but is that any 



STIMULUS NOT STRENGTH. 269 

good to him ? Suppose a horse cannot start a very heavy 
load, and you say he shall do it. You pull up the reins and 
shout, and the horse puts his shoulder to the collar, and 
strains with all his might, but he does n't start. Your neigh- 
bor says he can't start, but you say he shall. You pull up 
the reins again; the horse puts his shoulder to the collar, 
every nerve stands out in bold relief ; you take that big black 
whip of yours, and, as he is straining to the utmost, you hit 
him a terrible crack on the flank, and he starts the load. 
But did you give him strength ? No, you gave him stimu- 
lus ; you made him do what he had no right to do, and what 
you had no right to make him do. So, as I said just now, 
any man who does work under the influence of stimulant, — 
whether in the coal pit or in the iron mine, whether at the 
forge or at the bench, on the platform or in the pulpit, — 
that he could not do without it, does it to the damage of his 
constitution ; pay-day will come by and by. Nature is a 
hard creditor ; interest accumulates, and when pay-day 
comes, the man is broken down far in advance of his time. 
I say there is no good in beer, but there is positive evil. 
Is there any gratification ? If there is, it is all in the time 
of drinking. Did you ever experience any gratification the 
next morning after a night of drinking? The gratification 
was produced by stimulating the system. Then there is a reac- 
tion, — it must come. My word for it, the beer and spirit 
drinkers enjoy less of this world's good than any other class 
of men among us ; they are either in fiery excitement, their 
brain bewildered, their senses confused, and their capacity to 
enjoy destroyed for the time being, or else they are recover- 
ing from excess of excitement, and feel most miserable and 
wretched. Then do not common sense and sound judgment 
dictate to you to abandon intoxicating liquors forever ? 



CHAPTER XII. 

WHO ARE THE VICTIMS? — LIFE IN A BAR-ROOM — LIFE 
HISTORIES TRACED IN TEARS AND WRITTEN IN BLOOD. 

The Next Morning After a Spree — Maddening Thirst — A Visit to a Gin 
Shop — Scenes Inside — Victims at the Bar — Horrible Wrecks and 
Bloated Sots — The Suicide's Death-bed — Dreadful Scenes — The Ruling 
Passion Strong in Death — "Mary! Mary! I Have Signed the Pledge " — 
The Sailor's Speech — A Realistic Dream — Life Histories Traced in Tears 
and Written in Blood — Women who Drink in Low Life — Fearful Degra- 
dation — The Dead Mother and Her Babe — The Negro Jury's Ridiculous 
Verdict — Women Who Drink in High Life — A Sad Story — An Awful 
Death — An Audience of Drunkards — James McCurrey — Inviting a Sot 
to Sleep in His House — Burning the Bed Clothes Next Day — Noble Act 
of a Noble Man — What Followed — The Prize-Fighter's Story — Saved 
by Kindness — The History of a Grog-shop Fiddler — The Shipwreck — 
Man the Lifeboat ! 




T is a gross insult to call a 
man a fool. Every man would 
resent it. But in the suffer- 
ing of the next morning after 
a night of dissipation and de- 
bauchery, how then? Did 
you never lie in your bed 
wondering how you came there, with 
disturbed conscience, aching head, 
lips dry and parched, temples throb- 
bing, racking brain, hot, feverish 
tongue ? Did you never, in the terrible suffering that is sure 
to follow a night of dissolute revelry, clasp your burning 
hands and bitterly call' yourself " Fool ! fool ! " and add : " I 
made a miserable fool of myself last night, and now I am 



TERRIBLE CRAVING FOR LIQUOR. 



271 



suffering these unutterable torments ! What a fool I am ! " 
If the first glass brought at once the suffering of the 
reaction, and the excitement came the next morning, who 

would drink? If delirium tremens 
came first, and the fun after, who 
would drink ? My friend, it does 



not pay to begin, 
erate the drink: 




First, you tol- 
then touch and 
taste it; then 
jest and laugh 
at it ; and then 
revel in it. 
What may it 
come to when 
it becomes 
your master ? 
A man will not 
then drink for 
sociability and 
with pleasant 
companions, 
but for the ex- 
citement ; not 
for the plea- 
sure of drink, 
hutto get drunk. 
In solitude he 
will gulp down 
glass after glass 
of anything 
that will gratify his morbid appetite, carrying liquor with 
him in his pocket; getting up in the night and crawling 
round in the dark to find it ; and then suckino- out of a 



WHAT A FOOL I AM.' 



272 THE GIN FIEND. 

bottle anything that will stay this morbid craving. There is no 
outbreak of convivial cheer now, no poetry, no wreath around 
the goblet ; but a mad furious instinct for solitary excess. 

A celebrated surgeon once said : " I feel the most terrible 
and infernal craving that anyone out of hell can imagine. 
It is not because I want to drink. I do not want to drink. 
It is because I want to feel drunk. I am miserable and gloomy 
without knowing why. Everything seems going wrong. I 
shudder at times, shed tears, and fight against this longing. 
Oh, this terrible — this horrible desire to get drunk ! " 

Look at the low grog-shops and drinking-houses, and see 
the miserable victims of this damning vice. Tell them they 
are drinking oil of vitriol, oil of turpentine, sulphuric acid, 
benzine, or any other acrid and poisonous compound; tell 
them that the tap they drink from spurts corroding fire, and 
they will still drink on ; and to get drunk they will drink 
themselves to death. To be a drunkard! to lead a drunk- 
ard's life ! — what a history is that ; commencing with the 
time when he was a pure, rosy-cheeked boy, then on through 
wasted youth, blasted manhood, days of alternate revelling, 
and cursing, a life of unrelieved misery, a death of shame 
and anguish. Is it wise to drink? 

Go, if you please, into one of your drinking-rooms, one of 
your gin-shops, and see men standing at the counter. Look 
at that pale-faced, pallid-looking gin-drinker; see his eyes, 
how large they are, how deeply sunken in the sockets, as with 
his fingers, like the claws of an unclean bird, he clutches that 
glass of gin. Why, he looks almost as if he had come up 
out of his grave to get his gin and had forgotten the way 
back again. It is horrible to look at him. And yet that is a 
man ! See, there is another one, the dull waters of disease 
stagnant in his eye ; sensuality seated upon his cracked, 
swollen, parched lip ; see him gibbering in all the idiocy of 



WHAT DRINK DOES. 273 

drunkenness. That is a man ! I know it is sometimes hard 
to look at the blear-eyed, bloated sot, and feel, " That is a 
man." Have you ever seen that admirable picture by Cruik- 
shank, " The man that thinks and acts, and the thing that 
drinks and smokes ? " I have looked at the two, and yet the 
one is just as much a man as the other. God created him 
with the same faculties, " in the image of God created He 
him." He gave him dominion over the beasts of the field, 
and crowned him lord of creation. That a man ? A blear- 
eyed, bloated thing like that? A man? 

God has given power and dominion to man, and made him 
nature's king. What has broken his sceptre ? What has 
torn the imperial crown from his brow and debased him below 
the beasts? Drunkenness. God has given to man reason, 
and set before him a destiny high and glorious, reaching into 
eternity. What has dethroned his reason and hidden her 
bright beams in "mystic clouds that roll around the shat- 
tered temple of the human soul," curtained in midnight? 
Drunkenness. God has given him a healthy body; he is 
smitten with disease from head to foot. His body, so 
" fearfully and wonderfully made," is now a mass of corrup- 
tion more hideous than the leprosy of Naaman or the sores 
of Lazarus. What has done it? The drink, the drink has 
done it. 

You say, " but then I would give it up." You cannot. 
But perhaps that word should not be used; at least, we 
will say that you find it harder to give it up than you ever 
dreamed of. I have heard some men declare, " I cannot do 
it ; " and an educated man once said, " Doctor, if a glass of 
brandy were set before me, and I knew that if I drank 
it I should sink the next minute into an everlasting hell, I 'd 
drink it." The man was on his death-bed, and the fact is 
related in the Rev. W. Reid's Temperance Encyclopaedia. 



274 A DKEADFUL SCENE. 

A physician of Greenock once told me : " Mr. Gough, a few 
weeks since, I had a most horrible case. A man, when intox- 
icated, cut his throat. I sewed the wound up as well as I 
could, but I knew the poor fellow would die. They sent for 
a minister. The wounded man lay on his back and waved 
his hand, but could scarcely articulate to express his mean- 
ing. He was asked, 4 Do you want a minister ? ' He shook 
his head, waved his hand again, and moved his lips. The 
doctor stooped and put his ear to the man's mouth, but he 
could not understand what he said. At last, the man fairly 
pinched the wound closely together with his fingers, and 
feebly articulated, ' Doctor, for Christ's sake give me anothei 
glass.' " I say no man has power to describe or imagination 
to conceive an appetite like that. You may form some con- 
ception of it by seeing what men will give up to gratify it. 
We are in the habit of calling the drunkard a brute. Some- 
times we are thrilled with indignation when we hear of the 
brutal outrages perpetrated under the influence of drink. 
But they are men, — debased and degraded, I grant you, but 
still they are men. 

I heard a man say, — and I shall never forget it, — " Oh I 
what a time I had of it before I signed the pledge ! I waa 
a poor, miserable drunkard, and I had never thought of my 
wife with any sort of kindness for years ; but the moment I 
put my name to the pledge the first thought that came into 
my mind was, — I wonder how Mary will feel when I tell her 
I have signed it. Poor thing, she is so weak and feeble, she 
will faint away ; and I did not know how I should tell her., 
When I went home, there she was, crouching over a fire- 
place, with her fingers over a few bits of embers. When I 
went in, she did not iook up, she never used to. Sometimes; 
it was a blow, sometimes a kick, sometimes a curse, and her 
heart was nearly broken. She did not look up. Thinks I to. 



A STORY OF REAL LIFE. 



275 



myself, what shall I do ? I shuffled with my feet ; she did 
not turn round. I said, ' Mary ! Mary ! ' ' Well.' ' I think 
you work too hard, Mary ; I think you are getting a good 
deal thinner than you used to be, Mary ; you work a great 
deal too much, Mary.' ; Work ! ' said she. ' I must work ; 
what should we do ? The children have no bread for sup- 
per ; ' and she bowed her head. 4 Mary, you need not work 
so hard, because I will help you. ' ' You ? ' ' Mary, Mary,' 

I' ve signed the 
pledge.' She got 
up, and then fell 
fain ting in my 
arms, and as that 
sweet face lay 
there, I shall 
never forget it. 
Oh, how I cried! 
The tears seemed 
like boiling water 
down my face, and 
they fell in the 
face of my wife. 
The lids of her 
eyes were so blue, 
I feared she would never come to again; but she is alive 
and well, and thanks God night and morning for the temper- 
ance pledge. I have now a little piece of land of my own, 
and my children go to Sabbath school, but I never shall 
forget how I felt when I said, * Mary, Mary, I have, signed 
the pledge.' " 

I remember distinctly a little speech I once heard in the 
Bethel. A sailor stood up and said he had been a regular 
brute to his wife. He used to think nothing of coming home 




MARY, MARY, I'VE SIGNED THE PLEDGE. 



276 



THE SAILOR'S STORY. 



and knocking her down without the slightest provocation. 
" But," he said, " my wife never used to cry ; I thought she 
never did. I positively, ladies and gentlemen, have knocked 
her down, and she has got up and smiled at me. I thought 
Sally never cried; I really thought she had not a tear to 




"it came neaeek and nearer.' 



shed ; but I drank, and drank, and I abused her shamefully. 
One night, after abusing her pretty badly, I lay down on the 
bed and fell asleep, and I had a dream. I dreamed I was ship- 
wrecked, and that a lot of us clung to the floating wreckage, 
and there we all were, clinging for dear life, until at last all 
were washed off but me, and there I was, lashed to the 



BROKEN-HEARTED WOMEN. 277 

broken spars, tossing and tumbling in the water. At a 
distance I thought I saw one of those little, nasty, sharp, 
waves, — not one of the long rolling swells, but it seemed to 
be a little spiteful thing that kept bobbing up and down 
with considerable force ; and it glistened as if there was a 
light gleaming upon it, and it came nearer and nearer ; and 
I watched it, and it grew smaller and smaller until it seemed 
almost like a star, and the whole force of the waves seemed 
to dash into my face ; and the water felt warm and it woke 
me ; and there was Sally leaning over me, and the tears 
raining down on my face, and, for the first time, I felt she 
did cry, — and such hot tears they were, they almost scalded 
me. I sprang up, and on my knees swore to Sally that I 
would never again ill use her. And I never have." 

Think of the sufferings of all who are connected with an 
intemperate man, — not only of his children, but of his wife. 
I have had many communications from wives of drunkards, 
from many a broken-hearted woman whose life is a burden to 
her, from those who started with as fair and bright prospects 
as many that are entering life to-day, and whose prospects 
have been blasted and blighted. If I could read you some 
sentences from those letters, you would feel that they were 
prompted by a heart wrung with terrible anguish. A 
drunkard's wife, what is she ? Think of it, young women, 
think of it ? Linked for life to a man you cannot respect, 
tied to him by bonds that you feel cannot be broken? I 
believe that, in the judgment day, the crushed, the bruised, 
the broken-hearted women will rise against those who have 
crushed them ; and that they will testify in trumpet tones 
against those who have folded their arms and looked coolly 
on and seen them trampled beneath the iron hoof of the 
destroyer, without so much as lifting a finger to stem the tide 
of burning desolation. The history of a drunkard's wife 



278 HARROWING SCENES. 

might be traced in tears and written in blood, and there 
would not be a man with nerve enough to read it. 

Woman, too, more often sinned against, is yet sometimes 
the sinner by means of intoxicants. Every holy instinct and 
every womanly shame have been thus destroyed. The Pro- 
phet Isaiah, when describing the endurance of God's love 
towards Israel, calls to mind the devotion of a woman to her 
offspring, and asks, " Can a woman forget her sucking child, 
that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her 
womb?" Yes, we reply, the drunken one can, and often 
does. My valued friend, Mr. Samuel Bowly, gives us an 
instance of this in the mother at Bristol, who left her infant 
of a few weeks old for sixteen hours, which time she spent 
in a gin-palace ; and when brought back in an intoxicated 
state, her poor neglected baby was famished to death. It 
had wailed forth its tender life piteously and painfully, and 
there was none to heed its cries till the little sufferer was 
relieved by death. Can you not loathe the drink, the mate- 
rial that will cause such an unnatural crime as this ? 

"I met," says Prof. Henry Cooper, of Cambridge, "a few 
days since, an account of a young mother whose baby was 
but sixteen months old, who shut herself up in a room and 
there drunk herself to death. When the police broke in, 
they found her dead, an empty pint-and-a-half gin bottle by 
her side, and her poor baby in vain endeavoring to extract its 
food from her cold and lifeless breasts. The coroner's in- 
quest brought in a verdict of 'died by visitation of God.' 
But what think you ? Ought it not to have been ' suicide 
from drink ' ? " 

There have been verdicts given by coroners' juries, where, 
although drunkenness was evidently the cause of death, the 
verdict was, " died by the visitation of God," etc. In one 
ease a verdict of this kind was returned when a man expired 



VERDICTS OF CORONERS' JURIES. 



279 



while sustaining a bet as to who could drink the largest 
quantity of spirits at a time. In another instance a man 
was found buried in snow, where he had fallen while in 
an intoxicated state. The verdict of the jury was, " died of 
fatigue and exposure to the cold." In another case of sud- 
den death from intoxication, the verdict was, " died in a fit." 
These verdicts are contemptible. There is a distinction be- 
tween contemptible and ridiculous. A man may be absurd 




"washed ashobe and fkiz to death." 

and ridiculous, and yet not contemptible. Here is an 
example of a ridiculous verdict: A dead man was found 
on the shores of New Jersey, with a wound on the back of 
his head. A colored jury was impanelled and the verdict 
was, "that the deceased came to his death by a blow on the 
back of his head — fust; given by some person or persons 
unknown to the jury ; then he was thrown overboard and was 
drowned — second; thirdly, he was washed ashore and friz 
to death." That verdict was ridiculous and absurd, but it 
was not contemptible, because there was an evident desire to 
get at the truth, and that is the distinction. 



280 DISGRACE IN HIGH LIFE. 

" It is not the poor woman only, or the one in an inferior 
social position that drink has depraved." I qnote from Prof. 
Cooper. " I have lately heard a painful case of this degrada- 
tion in one who occupied a good position in society, a young 
lady who resided in one of the most fashionable parts of Bir- 
mingham. She was amiable, beautiful, highly accomplished 
and educated, the delight of the circle in which she moved, 
and the good angel to administer to the wants of those below 
her in life. She was daily to be seen on some errand of 
mercy, driving in the brougham of her brother with whom 
she lived. Her brother received much company, and the 
wine was freely circulated at his hospitable board. Without 
thinking of the danger, she partook with her guests and 
began to like wine. The taste grew upon her, and at length 
she craved it. She imperceptibly acquired the habit of 
taking it several times a day, and always kept it in her 
boudoir or private room. After a while it was perceived 
that she was often in an unfit state to receive company, her 
errands of benevolence were forgotten, and she herself 
became an object of pity to her friends. Remonstrance was 
tried in vain ; she was beyond recovery, deeply enslaved by 
this vice. She eventually threw over all restraint and was 
scarcely sober night or day. Her broken-hearted brother, 
unable to endure her disgrace any longer, resolved to banish 
her from his home. She was sent to Guernsey with an 
allowance of £150 a year. There she lived a year or two, 
spending all her income in the indulgence of her love for 
drink, and sank lower and lower, even to the lowest depth 
of degradation. Then it happened, that, after a more than 
usually severe debauch, she became seriously ill, and the 
medical man who recites this tale was sent for about four 
days before her death. He found her the remains of a once 
noble-looking woman, disfigured through her degrading vice, 



AN AWFUL DEATH. 281 

evidently once enjoying a respectable social position, but 
then stretched on a miserable bed, in a wretched attic, in a 
low neighborhood. Though made aware of her approaching 
dissolution, she would listen to no religious appeal ; her only 
thought, her only wish, her only cry, was for 'gin.' She 
uttered impious oaths and blasphemies in reply to all entrea- 
ties to prepare for her death, and died in an awful paroxysm, 
shrieking, ' Gin ! gin ! gin ! ' What can be more appalling 
than such a scene as this? Friend of humanity, Christian, 
we ask you again, ' Can you love the material that pro- 
duces such ruin as this ? ' " 

I have great sympathy for the poor and fallen. Some say, 
" Yes, but they have brought it upon themselves." " Judge 
not, that ye be not judged : for with what measure ye mete it 
shall be measured to you again." What would become of 
you or I if He who was set before us as a pattern should 
judge as you judge? "Let them alone, they are polluted, 
depraved, debased; the jaws of hell are ready to swallow 
them up ; let them alone ; they have brought it upon them- 
selves." What a horrible sight would this world present to 
the angels who should look down upon it, if these poor fallen 
men and women were left in despair and hopelessness be- 
cause they brought ruin upon themselves ! But oh ! He 
manifested his love for us, in that while we were yet sin- 
ners, He died for us. Oh ! look at the foot of the hill — who 
is that toiling beneath the burden of his cross, the crown of 
thorns piercing his temples, and the drops of blood streaming 
down his face ? See him there, lifted between the heavens 
and the earth, between two thieves nailed to the accursed 
tree ! Not one groan, not one moan of anguish, not one cry 
but this : " Eloi, eloi, lama Sabachthani ? " " My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me?" Angels were looking upon that 
scene, and devils trembled as they gazed upon it. For what ? 



282 



AN AUDIENCE OF DRUNKARDS. 



For me, for you, who brought judgment on ourselves for our 
wilful transgressions of law. Oh, the drunkard is your 
brother ; he is a man. In that day for which all other days 
were made he will be judged with you. Look upon him, 
then, as a brother ; a weak-minded brother, perhaps, but still 
a brother. If you have what some are pleased to call self- 
control, if you possess a strong physi- 
cal frame, if you have tough nerves so 
that you can do what he cannot, will 
you not abandon for his sake that which 
may be lawful for you ? Bring him up, 
stand by his side, sustain and support 
him in his resolution. 

What shall we do with regard to the 
intemperate ? That is a question we 
must face. Many people say: "Why 
don't you get an audience of drunk- 
ards ? " Why, what should I do if I 
had them ? I am willing to address an 
audience of drunkards at any time; 
selected, if you will ; I care not whether 
they be the worst specimens or not. 
I want to get at them. But it is per- 
sonal appeal that is to do the work with the drunkard. 
It is personal interest in him that will affect him. I saw a 
drunkard two-and-twenty years ago in Exeter Hall, London, 
and after he had made his mark to the pledge (for he 
could not write), he attempted to show us how ragged he 
was. We begged him to cover up his nakedness. James 
McCurrey, — God bless him, — as noble a man as any in the 
world, stood by his side, and said to him not, " I hope you 
will keep that pledge ; it will be a good thing for you if you 
stick to it," thereby conveying an idea that no confidence 




A EAG SHOW. 



A NEW METHOD OF INSTRUCTION. 



283 



could be placed in his word. But " Where are you going to 
sleep to-night?" "Where I slept last night." "Where is 
that?" " In the streets." "Come home with me." And I 
tell you, my friends, there is something grand in such an 
invitation as that. They went away together. James 
McCurrey told me that his wife burnt the bed-clothes the 
next morning ; but he added : " What is a set of bed-clothes 
compared with the salvation of a man?" 
That man kept his pledge. 

His after-history is exceedingly interest- 
ing. He was a prize-fighter, 
broken down by dissipation, 
ignorant and friendless. When 
he became perfectly sober he 
realized in some degree his 
position as an ignorant man. 
He worked steadily for his 
benefactor till he had earned a 
suit of clothes, and one shilling 
with which he purchased some 
pictures, a dozen for a 
ha'penny, and went to the 
superintendent of a Sunday 
school and asked him to give 
him a position in the school as a teacher. He was asked 
what kind of boys he would like. He said : " The smallest 
boys in the school ; I am very fond of small boys." So a 
class was given him, and as he sat before them, he said: 
" Now, boys, I am going to teach you, perhaps as you were 
never tanght before. I am going to find out what you 
know." (Remember, this man did not know one letter from 
another.) " I want to ascertain what you know, and when I 
ask you, if you tell me true, I '11 give you a picture ! " Hold- 




THE TEACHER TAUGHT. 



284 STOKY OF A GROG-SHOP FIDDLER. 

ing a book open, and pointing to a letter, he said to the first 
boy : " What letter is that ? " The boy told him. Keeping 
his finger over it, and holding the book before the last boy in 
the class, he said : " Now you point out the letter which he 
said is ' A ', so that I can be sure." The boy told him. He 
began to put letters together in the same way, and after a 
while put words together and learned to read. After he had 
been two years in the school he stood up and told them that 
he had come into that school not knowing a letter ; he came 
as a teacher, but the boys had taught him. And that was 
not the greatest advantage ; he believed the Holy Spirit had 
taught him to give his heart to the Saviour, which he had. 
He soon after took up the labor of a city missionary and 
became an effective worker. 

They are not all fools who have become drunkards. 
Opposite a grog-shop, in a certain town, you might have 
seen a drivelling, idiotic drunkard seated upon a box, with 
a slouched hat drawn over his eyes and a fiddle in his hand, 
attempting to scrape out such music as would please the 
company of inebriates that surrounded him; and they, in 
turn, attempting to shuffle and dance, paying the miserable 
music-maker his wages in rum. No doubt they looked at 
him with great contempt, thinking themselves superior to 
him. Just look at him ; what a fool ! See how he chuckles 
as the glass is presented to him, as he puts it to his blistered 
lips and quaffs the liquor ; now he wipes his frothy mouth, 
first with the back of his hand arid then with his palm ; what 
a fool ! This was the man and his employment in 1840. 
That man signed the pledge, and in three years he was a 
representative in Congress. In 1848 that same man was 
nominated by his party as a candidate for the gubernatorial 
chair of the State ; neither did those who have heard him as I 
have, when his form seemed to dilate with the great thoughts 



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WORKING FOR OTHERS. 287 

to which he gave utterance in a torrent of burning words 
that sunk deep into the hearts of his hearers, nor did the 
Congress that was occasionally electrified by his eloquence or 
melted by his pathos ever dream that he was a fool. Yet 
this poor creature of 1840 possessed the same mind, the 
same genius with the man of 1848; and when his fellow- 
countrymen proposed him for and carried him into the high 
seat of honor, did they esteem him a fool ? It is drunkenness 
that befools men more than any other vice. 

I remember reading that in the Bosphorus a beautiful jewel 
was dropped in the water, and they desired to ascertain the 
place where the gem had fallen, for it was valuable ; but the 
surface was so rough they could not discern it. Some one 
proposed to pour oil on the water; they did so, saw the 
jewel, and obtained it. Now the drunkard's breast is like 
troubled waters, casting up mire and dirt. Let us drop the 
oil of sympathy upon the heaving waters, and just as sure 
as God put a jewel there we will have it. Bright and beau- 
tiful ones are now shining like stars in the firmament of 
talent, virtue, morality, and religion, that have been brought 
to the surface by the oil of sympathy. It makes, the water 
clear, so that we know just where to dive. 

It is worth while to work for others. It is worth some- 
thing to save life. As the day broke, one fearfully stormy 
morning, a large barque ran on a bank of sand, eight miles 
from the British coast, and lay there at the mercy of the 
tempest, filling with water. She rapidly began to settle, 
the waves breaking fiercly over her. Her boats were knocked 
to pieces, her hatches were stove in. Eighteen men were in 
the rigging, clinging to the shrouds of that sprung and broken 
foremast; the mainmast was gone. No hope was in their 
hearts, no help was nigh. But is there no hope, no help? 
They are seen from the shore. No sooner is the word 



288 "MAN THE LIFE-BOAT!" 

passed, kt A wreck ! a wreck ! " than the gallant boatmen 
spring to the beach. " Man the lifeboat ! " Yes, but the 
waves are driving furiously in to shore. " Man the lifeboat ! " 
Yes, but the snow is drifting in blinding squalls. " Man the 
lifeboat ! " One by one the noble fellows take their places. 
Out they dash in the teeth of the gale. " Oars out, my men. 
Steady ! Oars out ! " They are knee-deep in water. The 
waves beat upon them; they are drenched, and all but 
drowned. Yet how cheerfully they bend their backs to the 
ashen oars. " Hold on, every man of you ! " Every man 
holds on to the thwart before him, whilst an immense wave 
rolls over, burying them fathoms deep. They rise and shake 
their locks. But where is the wreck? The weather is so 
thick they cannot see her. Now there is a break in the drift ; 
there she lies, the starboard bow the only part of the hull 
visible. Are there any men in that tangled rigging ? Yes, 
see ! the rigging is full of them. " Now, steady, men, steady. 
Keep clear of the wreck. Steady ! Ah, we have them now." 
She lies alongside ; and one by one the poor, half-drowned, 
half-frozen wretches drop into the boat, and out she drifts 
into the boiling sea. Amid the peril of the return, with the 
fierce waves hissing after them, how steadily they row. And 
now the lights break upon them from the shore, and soon the 
lookers-out on the beach hail them, " Lifeboat, ahoy ! Are 
they all safe?" "Ay, ay, every man safe." How they 
cheer ! and the cheer is louder and more hearty than that 
which greets the champion boat in a race. And why? 
Because these men have saved human life. 

Are there no wrecks around us, wrecks of intellect, 
wrecks of genius, wrecks of all that makes men noble? 
Man the lifeboat ! man the lifeboat, and save them ! See how 
they are drifting. Helm gone, compass gone. Man the life- 
boat ! See how they are dashed by the fierce waves upon 



SAYE THE FALLEN. 289 

the strand, wrecked and mined. Man the lifeboat and save 
them ! And if so be that you help some poor struggling 
soul through this world's wickedness into the haven of peace 
and rest, cheer after cheer from human voices may never 
salute you; but the shining white-robed angels shall smile 
upon you, and God's approval shall crown your noble 
endeavor, and the souls you have saved shall be as stars 
forever in the crown of your rejoicing. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CURIOSITY — STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS OF MEN OF GENIUS 

— STORIES OF INQUISITIVE AND MEDDLESOME PEOPLE. 

Curiosity; What Is It? — What it Has Led To — Utilizing Steam — Thrown 
into a Madhouse — "lam not Mad" — Left to Die — The Kilsby Tunnel 

— Hidden Quicksand — Solving the Problem — Stephenson's Stupendous 
Undertaking — The Electric Telegraph — Early Struggles of Prof. Samuel 
Morse — Gloomy Prospects — Help at Last — Unknown Heroes — Pick- 
wick and the Cabman — A Very Ancient Horse — An Inquisitive Com- 
panion — Judging from Appearances — "What Will You Give?" — A 
Printer's Self-Denial for His Little Blind Sister — A Noble Act — The 
Miser of Marseilles — His Will — Why He Hoarded His Gains — An Inci- 
dent in a Sleeping Car — A Bachelor's Experience — Taking Care of the 
Baby — Shakespeare's Skull — Story of the Philosopher and the Calf's 
Tail — Things We Do Not Know — Queer Reasons — ' ' Who Made You ? " 

— Five Pounds of " Ditto " — Wonderful Scientific Facts. 




HE definition of the term 
curiosity, according to Web- 
ster, is: the disposition to 
inquire, investigate, or seek 
after knowledge ; a desire to 
gratify the mind with new 
information on objects of 
interest; inquisitiveness. It 
is an element of our nature the first 
to be developed ; at the dawning of 
the intellect comes the desire to 
know ; the child's first reaching out 
its little hand to touch, the first inquiry, " What is it ? " is 
its manifestation. "Why is it? where is it? when is it? 
how is it ? " are evidences that the feeling of insatiable curi- 
osity possesses the mind in the dawn of life ; and that desire 

290 



WHAT WE OWE TO CUKIOSITY. 291 

lor knowledge natural to all ages is most vivid during the 
earliest period of life. Feeling the want of knowledge, the 
mind is eager to acquire it. Sterne says : " Curiosity seems 
woven into the frame of every son and daughter of Adam." 
It is of curiosity, the desire to know, that I would write, 
taking the term in its broadest meaning, and highest and 
noblest significance. 

Strip us of this element of curiosity and the mind would 
doze forever ; content with objects that presented them- 
selves directly to us, we should make no progress, the 
world would stand still, and ambition would die. Bulwer 
says : " It is a glorious fever, that desire to know." But, 
though this element is glorified by using it for high pur- 
poses, it is debased by using it for unworthy ends. In 
great minds it leads to grand discoveries, important and 
useful inventions ; in medium minds, to storing information 
on facts and things ; in little minds, to pitiful peddlings of 
gossip, and minding other people's business. Curiosity is 
the thirst of the soul. Dr. Johnson once said that science, 
though perhaps the nursling of interest, was the daughter of 
curiosity. We owe to the stimulus of curiosity all we know 
of the natural world, of the heavens above us, or the earth 
beneath. The burning desire to know, to investigate, has 
overcome every obstacle, confronted privation, scorn, con- 
tempt, persecution, — yes, even braved death itself. It is a 
sublime sight to see brave, patient, earnest human beings 
working their arduous way, struggling through the iron walls 
of penury into the magnificent infinite. How they have 
worked and suffered, none but He who inspired them 
knows; the world sees the result, and often receives it as 
a simple matter of fact, when, if it could know the dark- 
ness through which these men have struggled into light, the 
price that has been paid to secure that result, every new dis- 



292 A MADMAN'S DISCOVEKY. 

co very would stand out radiant with glory, and every discov- 
erer a pioneer in the wonderful path of knowledge that 
should lead the race of man nearer and nearer to the throne 
of the Infinite. 

It is wise to make ourselves acquainted with the struggles 
of these benefactors in their progress, and to know, so far as 
we may, how and at what cost these results have been 
achieved. The faith of Columbus in the existence of an 
unknown continent, which gave such loftiness and dignity to 
his character, grew out of curiosity to learn what was beyond 
the sea, roused at first by simple rumors of an undiscovered 
land. But even he did not know, when he first set his foot 
on America and solved the great mystery of the ocean, all 
we know to-day of what his faith achieved for him and for 
us, and for the world. For nearly a thousand years how 
many men of iron mould, of unflinching nerve, of undoubted 
skill, the picked men of the maritime world, have been 
worsted in the unequal conflict with the awful powers of 
nature, impelled and sustained by the curiosity to solve the 
question, " Is there a northwest passage ? " 

Solomon De Caus, a Norman, was perhaps the man who 
first projected the idea of moving ships and carriages by 
steam. He presented his plan to the French king, then tried 
the church, and, following a cardinal too perseveringly, was 
by him thrown into a mad-house. When the Marquis of 
Worcester went in 1641 to visit him, a frightful face appeared 
behind the bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed, "I am not 
mad, I am not mad ! I have made a discovery that would 
enrich any country that adopted it." " What has he dis- 
covered?'' "Oh, something trifling enough, you would 
never guess it ; the use of the steam of boiling water. To 
listen to him, you would imagine that, with steam, ships could 
be navigated, carriages be moved ; in fact, there is no end to 



PREJUDICE, IGNORANCE, AND ARTIFICE. 



293 



the miracles he insists could be performed with its aid, — oh, 
he is very mad ! " And so he was left to die. But men per- 
severed, and thought, toiled, experimented, lost their property, 
ruined their health, and died neglected ; yet they lived not 
in vain, nor la- 
bored and spent 
their strength 
for naught. 
Even their dis- 
appointments 
inspired emula- 
tion, and their 
failures taught 
others the way 
to a glorious 
success. 

It is humili- 
ating to record 
the prejudice, 
ignorance, and 
artifice by which 
many of the 
most valuable 
inventions were 
opposed, and by 
which they were 
so often and so long thwarted. Take the history of the 
early railroads. One might have supposed there would 
have been a general desire on the part of the community 
to receive with open arms, and hail with gratitude, an 
invention which would enable them, at about half price, 
to travel at five times the speed their utmost efforts had 
previously been able to attain. Not only that, but to 




Of 

I AM NOT MAD!" 



294 OPPOSITION THAT DID NOT PAY. 

afford similar facilities to millions of tons of merchandise. 
And yet, in tracing the lines for our great railways, the engi- 
neers were often looked upon as magicians and unclean spirits, 
whose unearthly object was to frighten the land from its pro- 
prietors. In many instances where it was proposed to give 
vigor and animation to a town by tapping it with a railway, 
the inhabitants fancied their interests would expire under 
the operation. Take, for instance, the opposition to Mr. 
Robert Stephenson's endeavors to locate the route of the 
London and Northwestern Railway, when the people of North- 
ampton, urged and excited by men of influence and education, 
opposed the scheme with such barbarous force that they suc- 
ceeded in distorting the line from that healthy and handsome 
town to a point five miles distant. But for that opposition 
the town would at once have attained to a position of com- 
mercial importance of inestimable value. They considered 
it utterly incredible that a railway could supersede mail and 
stage coaches. The invention was declared to be a smoky 
substitute for canals. Men of property inveighed against it, 
and their tenants were equally opposed. On one occasion, 
one of the engineers employed to trace out a line which was 
to confer inestimable advantages upon the locality, was 
attacked by the proprietors of the soil, and a conflict ensued 
which ended in serious legal results. Still, in spite of all 
this opposition, these men were determined to succeed. 

The following incident in connection with the London 
and Northwestern Railway, related in " Stokers and Pokers," 
is interesting. The Kilsby tunnel was to be driven one 
hundred and sixty feet below the surface for a distance of 
about seven thousand yards. The work was actively pro- 
gressing, when suddenly it was found that about two hundred 
yards from the south end of the tunnel there existed a hidden 
quicksand, which extended four hundred yards into the pro- 



A GREAT ENGINEERING FEAT. 295 

posed tunnel. Overwhelmed at the discovery, the contractor 
for the construction of the tunnel, though relieved by the 
company from his engagement, took to his bed and died. 
Then Robert Stephenson offered, after mature reflection, to 
undertake the responsibility of proceeding, and was authorized 
to do so. But the difficulties threatened that the effort would 
be hopeless, so much so that the directors had about deter- 
mined to abandon it, but Robert Stephenson prayed for one 
fortnight more ; and by the strength of twelve hundred 
and fifty men, two hundred horses, and thirteen steam 
engines, the work was gradually completed. During night 
and day, for eight months, the astonishing quantity of eighteen 
hundred gallons per minute from the quicksand alone was 
raised by Mr. Stephenson and conducted away. 

George Stephenson, the father of Robert, worked fifteen 
years at the improvement of his locomotive before he achieved 
success. Watt was engaged thirty years upon the condensing 
engine before he brought it to perfection. Samuel Morse, 
from his first experiment with the electric telegraph in 1835, 
till his experimental essay in 1844, struggled hard against 
obstacles and indifference, with scanty means, for nine years. 
The Congressional session of 1842-43 was a memorable one. 
On the last night he waited, almost without hope, and left 
the House discouraged and poor, reduced to his last dollar. 
He retired to bed, after arranging for his departure home the 
aext day. On the morning of that day, March 4, 1843, he was 
startled by the announcement that, in the midnight hour of 
the expiring session, Congress had voted to place at his dis- 
posal thirty thousand dollars for his experimental essay. Many 
of us remember that first line from Washington to Baltimore, 
when the practicability and utility of the electric telegraph 
was demonstrated to the world. The ocean telegraph, bring- 
ing two continents into almost instant communication, is a 



296 PIONEERS OF DISCOVERY AND INVENTION. 

triumph of scientific skill, a monument of enterprise and faith 
in human capability, an evidence of persevering determination 
in overcoming the most discouraging obstacles. All honor 
to the men who, through discouragements and failures, by 
their indomitable perseverance bore so honorable a part in 
that great enterprise. We, as Americans, are proud to claim 
them as our countrymen, and we rejoice in their success. 
They are but a few of the noble men who have by dis- 
covery and invention increased the desire for knowledge 
and light, and bequeathed an ample inheritance to the world. 
The names of many are forgotten, the successful only have 
been remembered; but all, known or unknown, have been 
as the sentinels of great ideas answering each other across 
the heads of many generations. 

Curiosity prompts men of a certain class to gather stores 
of information, furnishing themselves with facts that others 
have obtained. It is well to know all we can that is use- 
ful, and right to avail ourselves of other men's labors and 
investigations. God has given to but few favored ones the 
intellect and ability to discover truth; therefore it is a lawful 
curiosity that induces men to gain general information from 
the toils of others. Many a minister has been ruined in voice 
and health for the want of a knowledge of acoustics ; the health 
of thousands of persons is destroyed through a want of the 
knowledge of physical laws, by thin shoes, tight lacing and 
tight boots ; thousands of lives are lost by the use of improper 
food and the want of exercise. Many an audience has been 
poisoned by foul air, for the want of a knowledge of the laws 
of ventilation. Read the "Appeal to the Sextant : " " There 
are one commodity which is more than gold, which don't cost 
nothing, I mean pure air. But, O sextant, you shet up five 
hundred men, wimen, and children up in a tite place. O sex- 
tant, don't you know our lungs is belluses to blow the fire 



MR. PICKWICK AKD THE CABMAN. 



297 



of life, and keep it from goin' out ? And how can belluses 
blow without wind ? And ain't wind air ? Air is for us to 
breathe. Wot signifies who preaches, if I can't breathe? 
Wot 's Paul, wot 's 'Pollus to sinners wot are ded, — ded for 
want of breth ? O sextant, let a little air into our church : 
how it will rouse the people up, and sperrit up the preacher, 
and stop garps and fidgets as effectooal as wind on the dry 
bones the prophet tells of." 

Very curious people are 
sometimes im- 
posed on ludi- Afj" 
crously. All 
remember the 
amusing scene 
between Pick- 
wick and the 
cabman. 

"How old 
is that horse, 
my friend?" 

"Forty- 
two." 

" What ! " 
as he noted 
the fact in his 
book. " How long do you keep him out at a time? " 

" Two or three veeks." 

"Weeks?" 

" We seldom takes him home on account of his veakness." 

"Weakness?" 

" He always falls down when he 's took out o' the cab ; but 
when he 's in it, we bears him up werry tight and takes him 
in werry short, so as he can't werry well fall down; and 




A REMARKABLE HORSE. 



298 AN INQUISITIVE TRAVELLING COMPANION. 

we 've got a pair o' precious large wheels on, so ven he does 
move they run after him, and he must go on, — he can't help 
it." Every word of which Mr. Pickwick entered in his book 
as veritable information, and the result was an offer from the 
cabman to fight him for the fare. 

Some experiences in travelling are very annoying, and yet 
very amusing. You are comfortably seated in a railway car, 
absorbed in your book. "Is this seat taken?" "No, sir." 
" Fine day." " Yes, sir." " Going far ? " " Yes, sir." " New 
York, I presume ? " " Yes, sir." " Going farther ? " " Yes, 
sir." "Ah, South?" "Yes, sir." "Business?" "Yes, 
sir." "Dry goods?" "No, sir." "Ah! engaged in insur- 
ance?" "No, sir." "Speculation?" "No, sir." "Come 
from the East?" "Yes, sir." "Boston?" "No, sir." 
"What is your age, may I ask?" "No, sir." "Ah! yes, 
married ? " " Yes, sir." " Children ? " " No, sir." " Hum ! 
adopt any ? " " No, sir." " I should think you would. Be- 
long to the church?" "Yes, sir." "Orthodox?" "I sup- 
pose so." " Who's your minister ? " " Dr, Smith." " Smart 
preacher?" "Yes, sir." "Practical?" "Somewhat so." 
" Abolitionist ? " " Yes, sir." " What might your name be ? v 
Bless the man, it might be Belshazzar, but it is n't. 

The study of the character of others is very interesting, 
but in our judgment of men we are apt to forget circum- 
stances ; each one has an experience peculiarly his own, and 
not to be judged according to that of another. We have no 
right to judge unless we know all the circumstances of the 
case. What right have we to judge men simply from appear- 
ances ? How often we are deceived in this ! Have you never 
reversed your judgment ? Have you never said, " I am sorry 
I said so and so about a man ; for, when I knew all the circum- 
stances, the case appeared so very different ? " 

Let me relate an incident to you. You know I deal pretty 



A PRINTER'S SELF-DENIAL. 299 

much in illustration. I once heard Dr. Parker preach a ser- 
mon in which he encouraged me wonderfully. In speaking 
of those who endeavor to preach by illustration, anecdote, and 
parable, he said that some of them are doing work equal to 
that of great logicians. So I felt very much comforted, and 
I mean to continue with my anecdotes, stories, and illustra- 
tions. The incident to which I refer occurred in the city of 
New York. About fifty men were employed in a printing 
establishment. One of them had requested permission to 
sleep on the papers, under a bench, to save the expense of 
lodging, — he spent no money except for the commonest neces- 
saries of life. His fellow-workmen set him down as a mean 
man, a cowardly sneak, because, while they insulted him, he 
did not resent it. He bore all their persecution patiently, and 
they left no stone unturned to worry, to harass, and to annoy 
him in his business. This went on for months. It was the 
custom of the men in this office to have an annual picnic, or 
excursion party. One pay-day, in the month of June, the 
men were standing round the imposing-stone, when some one 
proposed that the excursion should take place the following 
month. "Very good." "Then we will make up our com- 
mittees, — committee on invitation and finance." "What 
will you give?" was asked, "and you? and you?" This 
man stood, "sent to Coventry," isolated, alone. Some one 
asked him how much he would subscribe for the picnic. He 
quietly refused to give anything for any pleasure excursion. 
The man who had asked him said something so grossly insult- 
ing that his patience was exhausted, and he let him have it 
right straight from the shoulder, and sent him to the floor. 
Then he said : " Now, gentlemen, I am no fighter ; I did not 
seek this quarrel, but matters have come to a crisis. You have 
treated me shamefully for months, and I have borne it pa- 
tiently. Now I suppose the place will be too hot to hold me, 



300 UNEXPECTED KINDNESS. 

and I must find some other employment. I have never told 
yon why I have been obliged to appear to you mean and ava- 
ricious, but I will do so now. I have a sister, whom I love, 
and I have been supporting her at a boarding-school ; this I 
found comparatively easy, but my sister has become blind. 
My poor little, blind, orphan sister is without a friend on earth, 
except myself, to care for her. I have ascertained that in 
Paris there resides a physician who has been very successful 
in curing the form of blindness with which my sister is 
afflicted; and, gentlemen, I have been starving myself for 
months to raise the money necessary to take her to Paris ; 
and by the help of God I will do it yet, in spite of your op- 
position." 

The man whom he had knocked down then said : " Look 
here, will you shake hands with me ? Have you any objec- 
tions to shaking hands with me ? From my heart and soul I 
beg your pardon. Now, men, we will have no excursion this 
year, but I ask every man in this shop to put down ten dollars 
on that imposing-stone." 

" Gentlemen,. I do not ask your money." 
" Down with the money, every man of you." 
In a fortnight, every man in that shop waited upon him 
on board the ship with his sister. Two years afterwards, 
they gladly welcomed him as he brought her back with sight 
restored, like one coming from the pool of Siloam. 

Some years ago, in Marseilles, there lived an old man, known 
to every urchin in the streets as a niggard in his dealings, and 
with habits of the utmost penury. From his boyhood, he 
had lived in the city, and though the people treated him with 
scorn and disgust, hooted at him in the streets, insulted 
him in every way, and though he was without one friend to 
give him a kind word, he could not be driven out of the place. 
At last he died, and left an ample fortune. On opening his 



A SCORNED AND HOOTED MISER. 



301 



will, they found these words : " Having observed from my 
childhood that the poor of Marseilles are ill supplied with 
water, which can only be procured at a great price, I have 







cheerfully labored the 
whole of my life to give 
them this great blessing, 
and I direct that the 
whole of my property be 
expended in building an 
aqueduct for their use." 
In one of our sleep- 
ing-cars a child was crying, and annoying the passengers, in 
spite of the attempts of the father to quiet it. One surly 
man — they said he was an old bachelor and hated children 
— pushed aside the curtain, and said : " Why is not that child 
in 



THE MISER OF MARSEILLES. 



302 AN OLD BACHELOR'S TENDER SPOT. 

kept quiet ? Where is the mother of that child ? Why does 
she not try to stop its crying? Why does she not attend 
to it?" 

The father said: "The mother of this child is in the 
baggage-car, in her coffin. I have been travelling with the 
baby for two nights and days, and the little creature is rest- 
less for its mother. I am very sorry if it has disturbed any 
person's rest." 

" Bless my soul, my friend ; wait a minute till I dress my- 
self," said the grumbler. And then he made the father lie 
down to sleep, took the baby himself, and cared for it till the 
morning. Any old bachelor who hates children will know 
that the man must have taken up his cross to care for that 
child through the night. 

We have curiosity about things that do not exist. All of 
us, without exception, seem to possess this desire. I remem- 
ber when I visited Alloway Kirk, I, with others, looked in at 
the same window through which Tarn O'Shanter saw the dance 
of the witches. We are told that a skull was once exhibited 
as Shakespeare's skull. Some one made the remark that the 
skull was very small. The reply was, " That was his skull 
when he was a little boy." Many persons who visit the Cats- 
kill Mountains are exceedingly anxious to visit the spot where 
Rip Van Winkle slept his long sleep. 

Then we have a curiosity about things we can never know; 
for there are some things very difficult to find out. A dealer 
in hides, wishing to attract customers by a striking sign, 
bored a hole through the door-post of his store, and stuck in 
it a calf 's tail, with the bushy end hanging down. One day 
a man dressed in black, with spectacles, stood a long time 
intently studying the tail. 

" Good morning, sir." " Good morning." 

" Want to buy hides ? " " No." 



A HARD PROBLEM. 



303 



"I am a philosopher. I 



" Want to sell any ? " " No." 

" Are you a farmer ? " " No." 

" A minister?" "No." 

"A doctor?" "No." 

" Well, what are you, then ? " 
have been studying for an hour to solve the problem of 
how that calf got 
through that auger- 
hole." 



Can you tell 
how many trunks 
a fashionable lady 
needs for a week 
at Saratoga? Why 
some people write 
their names in con- 
spicuous places? 
Why boys always 
laugh when a man 
falls down? Why 
women cry at wed- 
dings ? " Punch " 
has a picture of a 
wedding breakfast 
where all are cry- 
ing ; and the father, 
rising to propose 
the health of the 
newly-married 

couple, says : " This is the happiest day of my life ! " Can 
you tell what will be the next style of bonnets ? Why peo- 
ple never return borrowed umbrellas? Why a street car 
or an omnibus will always hold one more? Why there is 




THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE CALF'S TAIL. 



304 



UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS. 



never any one to blame for a railroad accident ? Why a 
is always on intimate terms with great people ? Did you 
see a dandy who did not think everybody admired him ? 
you tell how old your middle-aged lady friend is ? Did 
ever buy goods at an alarming 
sacrifice without being swindled? 
There are numberless little matters 



snob 
ever 
Can 
you 










illjlm 



THE BIG BOY AND LITTLE DICKEY TILTON. 



that are as profoundly in the dark as the author of " Junius " 
or the executioner of Charles the First. 

Queer reasons are sometimes given for the knowledge 
that others possess. "Who made you?" inquired a teacher, 
of a big lubberly boy of fourteen who had lately joined the 
class. "I don't know." "Don't know? You ought to be 
ashamed of yourself; why, there's little Dickey Tilton, — 



A CONFOUNDED FOOL AND HIS " DITTO." 305 

he can tell, I dare say, and lie is bnt three years old. 
Come here, Dickey; who made you?" "Dod," lisped the 
child. "There," said the teacher triumphantly, "I knew 
he would remember." "Well, he oughter," said the over- 
grown boy, "'t ain't but a little while since he was made." 
There are odd ways of obtaining information. A man 
came into the house with a bill in his hand. " Wife, what 
on earth is all this ditto you have bought at the store?" 
"Ditto? I never ordered any ditto." "Why, here it is on 
the bill : one pound of tea, one pound of ditto, ten pounds 
of sugar, five pounds of ditto." "I never bought an ounce 
of ditto in my life." He went to the store-keeper. " I say, 
my old woman says she never bought an ounce of ditto, and 
you have charged it by the pound." The matter was ex- 
plained. He went home. "Well, husband, have you found 
out what all that ditto means?" "Yes, I have." "Well, 
what is it?" "Why, that I 'm a confounded fool, and you're 
ditto." 

If our happiness consists in gratifying the love of learning 
new truths here, what will be the happiness in heaven, where 
we shall be forever satisfying the desire after more and yet 
more knowledge ! Here, in our finite state, our knowledge 
must be very imperfect, our capacities are so limited. Astron- 
omers tell us the sun is about ninety-five millions of miles 
from us, and Neptune thirty times as far ; that light comes to 
us from the sun in eight minutes, and from Neptune in four 
hours. How do they know this? I cannot tell, but it is 
evident they do know the movements of the planets, for they 
calculate eclipses with absolute accuracy. We receive their 
statements with credence ; and talk of the millions of miles, 
but we cannot comprehend such distances ; our ideas are 
extremely vague and confused. Well, we are told the sun is 
ninety-five millions of miles from us ; all we can say is, it is 



306 INCOMPREHENSIBLE FIGURES. 

a vast distance, and that is about all we know of it. Our 
idea of distance is obtained from the time it takes to travel 
over it. Put a baby, as soon as he is born, into an express 
train going at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, and 
he would grow to be a boy, the boy grow to be a man, the 
man grow old and die, without reaching the sun; for it is 
one hundred and eight years' distance from us, if we trav- 
elled towards it day and night, without stopping, at the rate 
of one hundred miles an hour. If Adam and Eve had started 
at the rate of fifty miles an hour for Neptune, they would not 
have reached it yet. But when we come to the fixed stars, 
the nearest is so far that light, travelling one hundred and 
ninety thousand miles a second, is three years in coming to 
us ; and there are stars whose light would take two thousand 
years to reach us. Here we are lost, and we gain but a very 
faint conception of immensity, or rather a confused notion 
of these incomprehensible distances. 

But, " in the soul of man, powers lie hidden like living seeds 
in the earth, which have not produced all their fruit. Eternal 
sunshine, the dew of ages, the everlasting seasons, are requi- 
site for the development of all the capabilities that are within 
us, and which can never die." There will be in the future 
state an eternally progressive perception of Omnipotence, 
receiving the meaning of the divine mind an atom at 
a time. Infinite perfections can never be exhausted; God 
can never be comprehended by us. He would cease to 
be God, could we understand him. The mysteries of the 
Godhead will be eternally revealing themselves with new 
developments of his power, his wisdom, his love, new revela- 
tions of his works, his dispensations. We shall be everlast- 
ingly approaching the unapproachable, continually accumu- 
lating knowledge, and gaining more power to grasp it. We 
shall find that this advancement only enlarges the conception 



THE WONDERFUL WORKS OF GOD. 307 

of the immeasurable distance between the creature and the 
Creator. "We shall learn and love infinitely as the divine 
attributes rise before us unsearchable and unlimited, eter- 
nally discovering more and more of their might, beauty, and 
harmony, and views mighty and ever-enlarging of all that is 
august in the nature of God, and wonderful in his works." 
" Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, it hath not entered 
into the heart of man to conceive." Oh, I believe that, "at 
every new development of the amazing power and love of 
God, the hearts of the redeemed will beat with a higher pulse 
of devotion, their harps be swept with a bolder hand, their 
tongues send forth a mightier chorus ; the voice which is to be 
as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thun- 
der, shall grow louder and louder, each manifestation of his 
power and love adding a new wave to the many waters, and 
a new peal to the great thunder, as they go on from strength 
to strength, always increasing in knowledge, admitted to 
richer and richer discoveries ; ' eternity a glorious morning, 
the sun climbing higher and higher, one blessed, eternal spring- 
time.' " Thought itself cannot measure such a portion when 
a flood of splendid light will be poured over creation and 
redemption alike, as " in his light we shall see light." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RUGGED ROAD TO SUCCESS — HEROES AND HEROISM IN 
HUMBLE LIFE — THRILLING INCIDENTS AND STORIES. 

Patience and Perseverance Necessary to Success — The Man Who 
Thought of the Steamboat — " Poor Fellow; He's Crazy Yet" — His 
Last Request — A Nobleman's Foolish Boast — Eating the Boiler of a 
Steamboat — Among the Cornwall Miners — A Thrilling Incident — 
Touching off a Blast at the Bottom of a Deep Shaft — A Moment of Ter- 
rible Suspense — " Up with Ye ! I '11 Be in Heaven in a Minute " — An 
Act of Noble Self-sacrifice — A Hero in Humble Life — The Explosion — 
Descending the Shaft — A Champagne Factory in New Jersey — Stepping 
Into the Slush — Burnt Boots — A Hard Fight — Fable of the Cat and 
the Wily Mouse — Getting the Best of the Cat — A Humorous Story — 
The Old Couple Who "Swore off" — "Well, I Will if you Will" — A 
Meal of Toasted Cheese — Building the Temple. 




OR more than half a century, 
men from all grades of so- 
ciety, from all professions, 
and of multiform experience, 
have thought, spoken, and 
written on every phase of 
temperance reform, but still 
it has been, and is, a pro- 
gressive work. Some people have 
an idea that reforms consist of one 
great spasmodic effort ; but, to suc- 
ceed, we must be willing to work 
slowly, by patient and often unheralded endeavor. Read 
the history of the reforms of the world. What patient per- 
sistence ! "What endeavor to build better ! Who can measure 
or weigh the throes endured as nation after nation has come 
308 



EMINENT DEFENDEKS OF WRONG. 309 

to the birth-hour of its best reforms ? And from what small 
beginnings these great enterprises have started ! To-day we 
smile at the weakness of those early efforts, as in the strength 
of our manhood we smile at the feeble efforts of childhood. 
I have seen the first constitution and by-laws of the first 
association in the United States for the promotion of temper- 
ance, formed in 1804. One of the provisions of the consti- 
tution was this : — 

" Any member of this association who shall be convicted of gross intoxi- 
cation shall be fined twenty-five cents, unless such act of intoxication shall 
take place on the 4th of July, or on any regularly appointed military muster." 

We smile at that to-day, but that was in advance of public 
sentiment, and the men who adopted it were iconoclasts, 
who went out in advance of their fellows to beat down the 
dagons their fathers had worshipped, and they were perse- 
cuted. There never yet was an enterprise that touched men's 
interests, appetites, or passions, that did not subject its pro- 
moters to persecution. 

We remember the terrible opposition to the anti-slavery 
movement, when men of the highest intellect and bright- 
est genius were called into requisition to defend a wrong. 
Daniel Webster said once, at a large meeting in Faneuil Hall, 
in reference to the agitation against the fugitive slave law : 
" This agitation must be stopped." Who will stop it ? 
Stopped ! An agitation of right against wrong stopped ! 
Christ against Belial stopped ! The agitation of human 
rights against men's interests stopped ! Who will stop it ? 
Thank God, no power on earth can avail when He moves, 
and no voice can be heard when He speaks ; and in his own 
good time every evil thing shall be abolished, even though it 
vanish in smoke and fire and blood, as slavery was extin- 
guished in our country. 

Men have ever spoken of an enterprise that was in advance 



310 DYING OF THE ONE-IDEA DISEASE. 

of public sentiment as a Utopian scheme. When a boy, I 
attended school at Folkestone, in Kent, and on my way I 
passed every day the house where Dr. Harvey lived. And 
who was he? The man who discovered the circulation of 
the blood, and he was bitterly opposed by members of his own 
profession. Men always persecute those who are in advance 
of public sentiment ; they say, " You cannot do it." 

We are told that a man in Philadelphia invented an 
engine by which he proposed to propel vessels through water 
against wind and tide, by the aid of steam. He was laughed 
at. " Propel vessels against wind and tide ? Perfectly 
ridiculous." He exhibited his diagrams, plans, and models. 
The whole thing was looked upon as a palpable absurdity, 
and the man as a monomaniac. He was treated as you would 
now treat the man who spends fifteen hours out of the 
twenty-four in trying to discover perpetual motion. He died 
in Kentucky, and during his last illness one of his friends, 
stooping over him, said : " Is there any request you have to 
make." " Yes," he said, his eyes brightening, " I have a last 
request to make. When I die, bury me by the banks of the 
Ohio, that in after years my spirit may be soothed by the 
songs of the boatmen and the music of the steam-engine, as 
the vessels pass and repass, conveying the product of one 
clime to another." His friend turned away, exclaiming : 
"Poor fellow! He is crazy yet. What a pity! He dies 
of the one-idea disease." One-idea disease ! His mind was 
like a mountain-top towering above its fellows, catching the 
first beams of the morning light, and basking in the full sun- 
shine, while those in the valley were shrouded in gloom ; and 
if his spirit may be permitted to wander by the banks of 
the Ohio, he will know that there the music of the steam- 
engine never ceases, night or day; it is one glorious paean 
of triumph for the mighty power of science. 



A TOUGH MEAL. 



311 



When men first agitated the railroad scheme, they were 
laughed at. " Railroads ! How, in the name of common 
sense, can you build a railroad ? We are willing to believe 
anything in reason, but how can you ascend a hill with a rail- 
road? Why, some of these fanatical fellows talk of going at 
the rate of twenty miles an hour. At such a break-neck 
pace they would endanger the lives of all the passengers." 
One gentleman in Boston said he would oppose the granting 
of a railway charter be- 
cause the parties wanted 




■% m- ; - fc 

LIFE IN A RAILWAY CAR. 



to go the whole dis- 
tance, sixteen miles, in 
an hour. One gentle- 
man in England, now an earl, said : " They talk of bridging 
the Atlantic by steam ; I will eat the boiler of the first 
steamboat that goes across the Atlantic." Steamers are 
daily crossing, but I have never heard that the gentleman 
has eaten a boiler. You will see in a railway train the 
lawyer looking over his brief, the minister studying his next 
Sunday's sermon, a couple in a corner talking soft nonsense ; 
and nobody thinks of breaking necks now. Perhaps, too, you 
will see a couple of the most inveterate grumblers the world 
ever produced, men who battled to the very last against grant- 
ing the charter. " We are a wonderful people, are n't we ? " says 
one. " Yes, we are an astonishingly wonderful people ; this 



312 AN AGE OF DEVELOPMENT. 

is an age of progress, sir. Why, I remember when we were 
two weeks in performing a journey which is now accom- 
plished in twenty-four hours." Yes, it is "we" now. Why? 
Because the work is done ; because the plan is carried out, 
and proved to be popular. Plenty of men oppose a thing 
till it becomes popular ; then they will ride on a railway that 
others have built in spite of them, drawn by a locomotive 
other men have made in spite of opposition and ridicule; 
and then have the impudence to say, " We have done it." 

We are living in an age of progress. In science, me- 
chanics, locomotion, there has been vast progress. We live 
in an age in which great and glorious truths are being 
developed; I say developed, for there are no new truths. 
Truth is eternal ; it was as true thousands of years ago that 
messages could be transmitted by the telegraphic wires as 
it is to-day. It was as true centuries ago that vessels could 
be propelled by steam against wind and tide as it is to-day. 
It has always been true that God made of one blood all 
the nations of the earth. Men have forgotten that truth, 
but they are now coming back to it. They are beginning 
to look upon their fellow-men as brethren. 

Have faith in human progress. There may be dark clouds 
about us, but stand on yonder rock, take your place upon 
the cliff, and, though you cannot see, have faith and listen, 
and the breeze will bring to your ear the boom of the bell 
that is to ring the death-knell of oppression and wrong-doing 
over all God's universe. Have faith in human progress; 
such progress as shall lead to the realization of what is com* 
prehended under the terms liberty, fraternity, equality, when 
these terms shall be understood in their highest signifi- 
cance. These words are not to be made mere by-words, 
but words which, when spoken, will make men's hearts burn 
with a desire to do something to redeem fallen humanity. 



" CRUCIFY THEM, CRUCIFY THEM!" 313 

This is the age of progress, true and certain progress. Time 
was when men were burnt at the stake, and were beheaded 
on the scaffold for the simple reading of God's word, and the 
world was quiet. When the Madiai were imprisoned in Tus- 
cany for Bible reading, was the world quiet? No. From 
pulpit, press, and platform, from the White House at Wash- 
ington, from the Parliament of Great Britain, came forth 
one cry of indignant remonstrance, and the prison-doors were 
thrown open, and the prisoners set free. How was this 
accomplished ? Was it by bloodshed ? by force of arms ? by 
war? No. I am a peace man, and I rejoice that the bloody 
banner is no longer applauded as it has been. It was accom- 
plished by the almost omnipotent power of human sympathy. 
Then let us have faith in our enterprise ; for side by side with 
the great enterprises of the day we claim to place the enter- 
prise of temperance. The men who laid its foundation stood 
alone when others stood by and laughed them to scorn. They 
had faith, and as they looked down the future they saw the 
beam inclining to the side of justice. 

In the olden time men were imprisoned in dungeons so 
vile that when we visit them to-day we are filled with horror. 
Men were mutilated and murdered for advocating civil and 
religious freedom. One generation persecuted them to the 
death, crying, " Crucify them, crucify them ! " But, thanks 
be to God, another generation has gathered the scattered 
ashes of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in 
the " golden urn of the nation's history." Ah, yes, the men 
who fight the early battles are they who bear the burden and 
heat of the day, sustained by the consciousness of right, and 
knowing that he who seeth in secret knows the desire, steady 
purpose, and firm self-denial of those who serve him, and that 
he will reward them openly though they may die and see no 
sign of victory. So shall it be in the future, in the final tri- 
umph of every good enterprise. 



314 A LITTLE GIRL'S FAMOUS ACT. 

Little Mary Newton, a girl of four years of age, touched 
an electric instrument with her baby finger, and the sunken 
rocks that had impeded navigation for centuries were burst 
in pieces with a roar and a crash, and a mighty upheaval of 
the water. Did Mary Newton do it ? Oh, no. There had 
been men under the surface placing dynamite. For months 
they had worked in the dark and in the wet. Those unseen 
men, who were toiling and laboring night and day, while 
ships were sailing over them, and men were passing on either 
side unconscious of all this hard toil, — they were the men 
that did the work, and Mary Newton was only the medium 
that God saw fit to touch the instrument that sent the elec- 
tric current on its mission. Now some of you are placing 
the dynamite. You are preparing that which is to explode 
by and by, when God sends some man that shall apply the 
match or turn on the electric current. 

There are no heroes who are selfish and mean. Meanness 
and selfishness are not elements of heroism. True heroism 
is to do for others, to work, to sacrifice for others ; that is 
true heroism. Ask the world's great men "In what does 
your greatness consist?" "I make marble breathe." "Yours?" 
"I make canvas speak." "Yours?" "I weigh the sun, and 
tell the courses of the stars." "Yours?" "I discover a 
world." "Yours?" "I conquer a world." Hark! Amid 
the hills of Galilee is heard the voice of Him who spake as 
never man spake. Reverently we ask, " Prophet of Nazareth, 
what is thy greatness ? " Hear the reply : " I came to seek 
and to save men." " By what means ? " " By giving myself 
a sacrifice for them." Competitors for heroism, fix your 
eyes there, and take your rank according to the most magni- 
ficent standard of heroism the universe has ever gazed upon. 
We are ready to acknowledge such heroism. 

I remember a little incident that happened many years 



INCIDENT IN A CORNISH MINE. 



315 



ago. When I was in Cornwall, in 1854, I visited the mine 
where the incident occurred. Carlyle refers to the story in 
one of the chapters of his "Life of Sterling." Two men 
were sinking a shaft. It was danger- 
ous business, for it was necessary to 
blast the rock. It was their custom 
to cut the fuse with a sharp knife. 
One man then entered the bucket and 
made a signal to be hauled up. When 
the bucket again 
descended, the 
other man enter- 
ed it, and with 
one hand on the 

signal rope and 

the other hold- 
ing the fire, he 

touched the fuse, 

made the signal, 

and was rapidly 

drawn up before 

the explosion 

took place. 

One day they 

left the knife 

above, and rather 

than ascend to 

procure it, they 

cut the fuse with 

a sharp stone. It took fire. "The fuse is on fire ! " Both 

men leaped into the bucket, and made the signal ; but the 

windlass would haul up but one man at a time; only one 

could escape. One of the men instantly leaped out, and said 




ONLY ONE COULD BE SAVED. 



316 AN ACT OF HEEOISM. 

to the other, " Up wT ye ; I '11 be in heaven in a minute." 
With lightning speed the bucket was drawn up, and the one 
man was saved. The explosion took place. Men descended, 
expecting to find the mangled body of the other miner ; but 
the blast had loosened a mass of rock, and it lay diagonally 
across him ; and, with the exception of a few bruises and a 
little scorching, he was unhurt. When asked why he urged 
his comrade to escape, he gave a reason that sceptics would 
laugh at. If there is any being on the face of the earth I 
pity, it is a sceptic. I would not be what is called "a sceptic," 
to-day, for all this world's wealth. They may call it super- 
stition and fanaticism, or whatever they choose. But what 
did this hero say when asked, " Why did you insist on this 
other man's ascending?" In his quaint dialect, he replied, 
" Because I knowed my soul was safe ; for I 've gie it in the 
hands of Him of whom it is said, that ' faithfulness is the 
girdle of his reins,' and I knowed that what I gied Him He 'd 
never gie up. But t 'other chap was an awful wicked lad, 
and I wanted to gie him another chance." All the infidelity 
in the world cannot produce such a signal act of heroism as 
that. 

We admire and applaud the principle of self-sacrifice; 
and yet, when asked to give up a paltry gratification, we 
refuse. I ask you to bring before us all the good that has 
been produced in this country from the use of intoxicating 
liquors. What man has been made better by it, morally, 
physically, intellectually, or spiritually ? Religiously spiri- 
tual, I mean. No man. "Oh," you say, "but many men 
have been benefited by it physically." Well, I leave you in 
the hands of Dr. Richardson and Sir William Gull and Dr. 
Norman Kerr and a great many others who have written 
learnedly on the subject. Make the best you can of it, 
liquor is but a luxury. It is, to be sure, a gratification. I 



NEW JERSEY CHAMPAGNE. 317 

grant you there is a gratification in it. And what is it? 
The gratification of intoxication. "Ah, but I don't g^t 
intoxicated." Then what do you drink it for? Let me 
take all the intoxicating principle out of that glass of cham- 
pagne, and then do you want it ? Why, you know very well 
that dead beer is detestable stuff to drink. Take the fuddle 
out of it, and you do not want it. Let me take it out 
of your sherry, madeira, or burgundy, and who will drink 
them ? 

And then, what are you drinking ? Oh, you are drinking 




FRENCH CHAMPAGNE MADE IN NEW JERSEY. 

fine champagne and sherry, are you? Who gets the "sham 
pain?" Do you think you can obtain champagne in New 
York or London ? I was going to say I would give five 
hundred dollars to any man who will bring me a bottle of 
champagne, bought to-day in this country, that will stand a 
chemical test. There is more champagne bought and sold in 
New York city than is produced in the whole of the champagne 
district. I have heard of a champagne manufactory in New 
Jersey, where they send out hundreds and thousands of 
baskets of champagne marked with the French mark ! And 
they say that a man crossing the street where one of these 
champagne manufactories was in full blast, stepped into the 
debris or slush corning from the place, and when he got home 
20 



318 A TYEAKXICAL APPETITE. 

he found his boots were burnt ! You must remember that 
was the stuff met with outside ; I do not mean to say they 
would put such stuff as that into it. That was the refuse ! 

But we say not only, what are men drinking? but, why 
are they drinking? "Ah," says some one, "but I have not 
the kind of appetite you are speaking about; a man must 
have a terrible appetite to sacrifice everything for drink; 
I have no appetite of that kind." I do not know that 
you have, but T will give you a very easy method of test- 
ing it. You can either say, " O thou invisible spirit of 
wine, if we had no other name by which to call thee, we 
would call thee devil; but, devil as thou art, I am your 
master," — you can either say that, or it is your master. 
You are either free from it or you are not. There may be 
different degrees of bondage. I will give you an easy method 
of testing the matter. When you want drink again, remem- 
ber that the want is produced by the use of the article you 
desire. Now see how strong that want is. 

The next time you want drink, just let it alone, go about 
your business, and you will soon begin to feel nervous, irri- 
table, and cross. Things do not go right — " I believe I must 
go and have a — " Ah! just let it alone. Sit down to dinner, 
you have no appetite — "I really believe I need a tonic — " 
Now just let it alone. You can do it safely, there is no doubt 
of that, just let it alone. " But how long must I let it 
alone?" Let it alone till you have ceased to want it. 
My word for it, some of you will have to fight for a month, 
for two months, for three or four months, before you are 
completely rid of all desire for it; and you will find it 
has a firmer grip than you imagine. A young man said to 
me after he had given it a trial, "Mr. Gough, I'll never 
touch it again ; I had no conception that drink had such a 
hold of me ; I thought I could leave it off when I'd a mind 



DRINK'S TERRIBLE GRIP. 319 

to, but I had to fight against it as if I were fighting for my 
life ; now I will have no more of it." 

Some people say, " We have tried abstinence, but it don't 
suit us." Why don't it suit them? I'll tell you. Because 
they don't try it long enough. A gentleman in a certain 
town in England where I spoke, after the second meeting, 
went home, and the porter was put on the supper table. 
The servant was leaving the room, and he said, "Jane. 
Jane ! come here, take away that porter. I 'm not going to 
drink any more porter, and you must put no more of it on 
the table." Jane took away the porter. The next day, he 
came in to lunch about one o'clock, and there was no porter 
on the table. As the servant was going out, he called her 
back and said, " Jane, ah - m — bring in the porter ; I ' ve 
stood it so long, I can't stand it any longer." I suppose 
that man would say he had no appetite, and yet he could not 
stand it without his porter for twenty-four hours, 

Some men, while they boast they have no appetite for 
intoxicating liquor, are positively ready to sacrifice that 
which they believe to be right and true, for the sake of it. 
No appetite? Why, I have seen men go into a dram-shop 
who looked as if they were ashamed to be seen entering such 
a place. I once saw a young man in Boston passing by a 
dram-shop that was kept in a cellar. He looked down to see 
who was there, and walked on. He came back again pres- 
ently, and peeped down again. Then, slyly looking around 
him, he mustered courage to go in, and, as he was diving 
down, the liquor-seller met him at the bottom of the stairs 
with the rebuff, " If you are ashamed to come in like a man, 
I am not ashamed to put you out like a dog." That young 
man might have said he had no appetite, yet he was sneaking 
into the dram-shop to get his drink under the influence of an 
appetite he denied. 



320 PROMISES MADE IN LIQUOR. 

I remember a little story of a mouse that fell into a beer- 
vat, poor thing! and a cat passing by saw the struggling 
little creature. The mouse said to the cat, " Help me out of 
my difficulty." "If I do I shall eat you," said the cat. 
" Very well," replied the mouse, " I would rather be eaten 
by a decent cat than drowned in such a horrible mess of 
stuff as this." It was a sensible cat, and it said, " I certainly 
shall eat you, and you must promise me on your word of 
honor that I may do so." " Very well, I will give you the 
promise ; I promise." So the cat fished the mouse out ; and, 
trusting to the promise, she dropped it an instant to clean 
her own mouth of the abomination of the vat, thinking she 
had better do so before she took a decent meal off the mouse. 
The mouse instantly darted away and crept into a hole in 
the corner, where the cat could not get him. " But did n't 
you promise me I might eat you?" "Yes, I did, but don't 
you know that when I made that promise I was in liquor ?" 
And how many promises made in liquor have been broken ! 

An old lady and gentlemen — not very old either — were 
once riding home from a temperance meeting where the 
speakers had been laying it down pretty plainly. They went 
along very quietly for some time. By and by the gentleman 
said to his wife with a sigh, "Well ? " To which she replied, 
"Well?" The old gentleman then, with a deeper sigh, said, 
"Well?" to which the lady replied, "Well, I will if you 
will." Said the gentleman, "Agreed." "Agreed," said the 
lady, " we are teetotalers." " We are teetotalers." " When 
shall we begin?" "At once." "Agreed." "Go along!" 
They went home. " Well, wife, we must have something 
for supper; what have you in the house, any cold meat?" 
"I believe there is no cold meat." "What shall we have?" 
"Suppose we have some toasted cheese?" "Very well, 
some toasted cheese." The bell was rung, and the servant 



A MEAL OF TOASTED CHEESE. 



321 



came in. " Bring us some toasted cheese, and m - m - m - 
water." Supper came in, and they began on the cheese. 
Said the wife, " Well ? " The old gentleman, making an effort 
to swallow the cheese, replied, "Well?" "Well," said the 
lady, "it's rather dry; what shall we do?" "Suppose we 
begin to-morrow." The bell was rung and the servant was 
ordered to bring in the porter. But they never began on 
the morrow. Their conscience was touched, they thought 

they could get on easily without 
the drink, but found they could 
not. However, the old man now 




WELL, ITS RATHER DRY. 



goes by the nickname of " Old Well," and he never will get 
rid of it as long as he lives, for he was foolish enough to tell 
the whole story. I think a man should ascertain whether he 
has an appetite or not, before he boasts that he has none. 

As I said in the opening of this chapter, temperance 
reform was a serious matter in those early days when the 
beginnings were small. The very men that adopted the con- 
istitution I alluded to were persecuted, hooted at, and pelted 
through the streets. The doors of their houses were black- 



322 THE TEMPLE OF TEMPERANCE. 

enecl, their cattle mutilated, their fruit-trees girdled. The 
fire of persecution scorched some men so that they left the 
work. Others worked on, and God blessed them. Some are 
living to-day. They worked hard. They lifted the first 
turf, prepared the bed in which to lay the corner-stone. 
They laid it amid persecution and storm, they worked under 
the surface. There were busy hands laying the solid founda- 
tion far down beneath. By and by, the superstructure rose 
above the surface, and then commenced another storm of 
persecution, but still they persevered. Now we see pillar 
after pillar, tower after tower, column after column with the 
capitals emblazoned with, "Love, truth, sympathy, and good 
will to men." Old men gaze upon it as it grows up before 
them. They will not live to see it completed, but they see in 
faith the crowning cope-stone set upon it. Sad-eyed women 
weep as it grows in beauty ; children strew the pathway of 
the workmen with flowers, and bind wreaths upon their 
brows. We do not see its beauty yet, we do not yet see the 
magnificence of this superstructure, because it is in course of 
erection. Scaffolding, ropes, ladders, workmen ascending 
and descending, hide the beauty of the building ; 'but by and 
by the scaffolding will fall with a crash, and the building will 
be seen in its wondrous beauty by an astonished world. 
The last poor drunkard shall go into it and find a refuge 
there; loud shouts of rejoicing shall be heard; and there shall 
be joy in heaven when the triumph of a great enterprise 
shall usher in the clay of the triumph of the cross of Christ. 
I believe it. Will you help us ? 



CHAPTER XV. 

GOSPEL TEMPERANCE — ILLUSTRATIVE INCIDENTS AND 
STORIES — LEAVES FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE. 

Why I Do Not Preach the Gospel — The Biggest Rascal I Ever Knew — The 
Grace of God — My Belief — Found Dead — The Frenchman and the City 
Missionary — An Honest Opinion — An Emphatic Statement — "Bosh" 
— Drinking First and Finding an Excuse Afterwards — A Clergyman's 
Story — "I Take it as a Medicine" — A Dandy's Worthless Advice — A 
Negro's Practical Help — Power of Man's Will — My Horror of Drunken- 
ness—Terrible Dreams— " It Tasted Good"— My Idea of Sin— Want 
of Cordiality in Our Churches — Chilly Reception to Strangers — My Own 
Experience — Painful Truths — A Novel Way of Getting Acquainted — 
Looking Back Thirty Years — A Good Story — Betty and the Bear — The 
Husband's Sudden Retreat to the Rafters — A Plucky Wife — " Take Him 
on the Other Side, Betty!" -"We" Have Done Gloriously. 




REMEMBER, some years 

ago, after I had delivered an 

address in which, subsequent 

to an exploring expedition in 

company with a detective, I 

had depicted the "sins and 

sorrows of a great city," a 

gentleman said to me: "You 

have revealed to us a state of things 

which is fearful, an amount of moral 

evil that is perfectly appalling. 

What do you consider the remedy 

for all this moral evil ? " I said to him, as I would say to 

you or to any one, " The only remedy for moral evil is 

the power of the gospel of the grace of God." He replied: 

323 



324 AN UNMITIGATED RASCAL. 

» Why don't you preach the gospel, then ? " I said : " The 
reason why I do not preach the gospel, according to your 
idea of preaching it, is that I have such an idea of the awful 
responsibility that rests upon any man who dares to stand 
between the living and the dead to deliver God's message to 
dying men, that unless I felt in the core of my heart, ' Woe 
is me, if I preach not the gospel,' with my sense of the 
requirements for the office, and with my views of it, I should 
not dare to occupy the position." Then he said: " You are 
preaching something else instead." "Oh, no!" "Is not 
drunkenness a moral evil?" " Yes." "Is not the power of 
the gospel of the grace of God the only remedy for moral 
evil?" "Yes." Now, by the total abstinence movement, 
we do not pretend to do more than the one thing. Drunk- 
enness is a moral evil produced by a physical agency. 
Remove the agency, and the moral evil ceases, so far as 
drunkenness is concerned. 

In advocating total abstinence, we do not present it as 
the remedy for all the evil and all the sin in the world. We 
do not pretend to say that if a man signs the total abstin- 
ence pledge he becomes endowed with all the cardinal virtues 
under the sun. There are some awfully mean men who do 
not drink. One of the most unmitigated specimens of ras- 
cality I ever knew had one redeeming feature, and that was 
he did not get drunk ; and yet he was guilty of almost every 
form of wickedness prohibited in the decalogue. 

"But you are putting temperance in the place of the 
gospel." I do not think so. The gospel is " the power of 
God unto salvation to every man that believe th." The total 
abstinence pledge and principle will do a certain work, and 
no more. If a drunkard adopts it, he cannot be a drunk- 
ard. If your boy never uses intoxicating liquor, he cannot 
be intemperate. Begging your pardon, he may be a thief, a 



INFIDELITY AND TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 325 

liar, a Sabbath-breaker ; he may be the boldest, brazen-faced 
blasphemer that ever lived, but he cannot be a drunkard. 
There is no virtue in the total abstinence pledge or principle, 
to make an intemperate man anything else but a sober man ; 
it will do that. You say the grace of God alone will effect 
it. Here is an infidel, and there is no virtue in total absti- 
nence to make him a Christian ; but I would rather have a 
sober infidel than a drunken professor of religion, because 
I love the church better than temperance associations, and 1 
believe these associations promote the very highest interests 
of the church. Suppose I go into the ditch and bring out a 
drunkard. I strip him of the grave-clothes of inebriation, 
I lead him along and whisper encouraging words in his ear, 
bringing him as near as I can to the very threshold of your 
church. Haven't I done a good work by mere human 
agency, as far as it goes ? Would n't you rather have Jiim 
there sober than drunk? Drunkenness is a physical evil, 
and it may be removed by human agency. The man's sin 
may not be removed, but he can no longer be a drunkard. 

Suppose you have a friend on a death-bed (I now speak 
to professing Christians), in a raging fever. He bites his 
lips, clenches his fist, and mutters unintelligible jargon. You 
know it is the grace of God only that can renew him in the 
spirit of his mind. Bring in your minister, let him point to 
the sacrifice once made for sin. The man knows nothing 
about it ; he is mad ; he does not know the wife that bends 
tearfully over him. What will you do? You send for the 
physician ; by cool appliances he reduces the fever, and by 
mere human agency brings the patient to a sane state of 
mind. Now whisper in his ear: "Faithful is the saying and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners." "Him that cometh to me I will in no 
wise cast out." He hears, he understands, light dawns upon 



326 HUMAN AGENCY. 

his mind, and you may be the instrument of his salvation, 
when without that agency you could not. 

Reading my Bible, I have come to the conclusion that, 
when human agency can do no more, then God does the 
rest. At the tomb of Lazarus, Christ said : " Take away the 
stone." He might have removed it, but he saw fit to use 
human instrumentality. They rolled away the stone, but 
they could do no more ; they stood by while Jesus spoke ; 
incipient putrefaction quivered and trembled into life, and 
Lazarus came forth. It was the power of God that raised 
the dead, but human agency removed the stone. And I 
believe the total abstinence enterprise has been instrumental 
in removing many a rock from the door of the dark tomb 
where the drunkard has lain, and the corpse of a drunkard 
has been seen in God's house a living man, — yes, a Christian 
man, — not saved by temperance, but brought under the influ- 
ence of those instrumentalities by which he has heard and 
believed, by the agency we advocate as a lawful remedy for 
the evil of drunkenness. I can ask God, therefore, to sanctify 
the enterprise to a higher end than merely lifting a man 
from the ditch. I thank God that some who were in the 
ditch have been redeemed. 

People talk sometimes of "temperance and religion." I 
know no such distinction in my own case ; my temperance is 
a part of my religion. I cannot be a Christian and a mode- 
rate drinker, any more than I can be a thief and a Christian. 
I am not judging you. Don't understand me as saying that 
a man cannot be a Christian unless he is a teetotaler. I am 
only judging myself, and with my view of the horrible evil 
of drunkenness, with my view of the way in which I came 
to it, with my view of the influence every man exerts, with 
my view of the drinking customs of society, if I countenance 
those customs, I am violating my allegiance to heaven. We 



WORKING TOGETHER FOR GOOD. 327 

are not presuming to put temperance in the place of the 
gospel, but we believe that temperance associations spring 
from the gospel, like every other benevolent enterprise. 

Some have said that this tends to infidelity. I defy you 
to bring me one man who was ever made an infidel by 
becoming a teetotaler. He may have been an infidel before 
he signed the pledge. You say we must not receive such a 
one. Now, though I am what is called an orthodox Congre- 
gationalism shall I ask a man, "Do you belong to my church?" 
before I will put shoulder to shoulder with him to help a 
man out of the ditch? No, we will work together to do 
good, if we are as wide asunder as the poles in politics and 
in religious opinions. We have no right to push men off 
the platform because they do not believe as we believe. I 
tell you one thing : if all professing Christians and ministers 
of the gospel had taken the position they ought to have 
taken upon the temperance question, I believe there would 
be fewer infidels among the teetotalers. I know some of 
our reformed drunkards have said hard things, but remember 
who they were. The iron entered into their souls ; they 
were miserable, poor, wretched, debased, and degraded. 
Some kind friend whispered words of hope in their ears; they 
wiped the dull film from their eyes and saw there was hope, 
and then they were brought into the house of God. I am not 
making a supposition only, but detailing facts which have 
more than once occurred. The man knows he is better than 
he was ; better to himself, to his family, and to society. He 
sits in God's house for the first time for years, he is affected 
by the singing and by the devotional exercises, and then the 
minister denounces as fanatical and unscriptural the move- 
ment that has brought him from the ditch. What is his 
opinion of that religion and that preaching ? " Here I was," 
he says, "in misery and wretchedness, a cursing and bias- 



328 INCONSISTENT WOEKEKS. 

pheming wretch ; I want to be better ; I go to the house of 
God, where I have not been since I was a child, and I hear 
the minister say it is all infidelity, anti-Bible, anti-Christian, 
it is putting temperance in the place of religion, and he 
denounces the movement that has benefited me." 

I feel as if there was fault on both sides. Let us throw 
back, however, the cause of infidelity where it belongs. What 
if temperance advocates have said hard things ? will you at- 
tack the Christian religion because of its professors ? I read 
in a Carlisle paper that the Rev. Mr. So-and-so, after divine 
service, went to a public house and became so intoxicated 
that the hostler wished to drive him home ; but he refused, 
and started full speed by himself. He was afterward found 
in the road, dead, with his face horribly bruised and mutilated. 
Will you say, "Is that the religion you boast of?" No, the 
fault of a minister of the gospel no more mars the glorious 
structure of Christianity than the fall of a workman from the 
scaffolding will mar the beauty of the building. Do not, 
then, denounce the movement for the faults of its advocates. 
I believe the indifference to religion among many abstainers 
is engendered and supported by the inconsistencies of profess- 
ing Christians more than by all the teetotalism that ever has 
been promulgated. A young man once came to me and said, 
" Mr. Gough, Mr. Mason came to see me, to talk about reli- 
gion, and what do you suppose I told him ? I said, ; Do you 
own the American Hotel ? ' ' Yes, I do.' ' Now,' said I, ' Mr. 
Mason, there 's drunkenness in that hotel from Saturday night 
till Sunday morning, drinking and gambling and scenes that 
are enough to make a man shudder. Now you give up your 
hotel, and then come and talk to me about religion, and 7 
will hear you.' " Now that was perfectly natural. 

Riding from Edinburgh to Dunfermline in company with 
a Frenchman, — not a religious man, nor a total abstainer, — 



MUCH RELIGION, BUT LITTLE CHRISTIANITY. 329 

I heard him conversing with a city missionary. He was evi- 
dently a sceptic. In the course of the conversation the city 
missionary said, "You must acknowledge that Scotland is a 
religious country." " Yes, sair," said the Frenchman, " I sup- 
pose you will call Scotland very releegious ; I find, sair, zat 
zere is a great deal of releegion, but very leetle Christianity. 
I will explain what I mean. You have in Scotland society 




WHAT FOR DO HE SAY ZAT OF MY 
COUNTRY?" 



for good tings, Sabbat- 
school, ragged-school ; 
very good. You have 
society for observance 
of ze Lord's day, to make ze people keep ze Sunday. Now, 
sair, I went to a meeting of ze society for ze better obsairv- 
ance of ze Sabbat, and a big, large gentleman zere make one 
grand speech. ' Gentlemen,' he said, ' look at France [zat is 
my country] ; France is accursed of God, He has trodden 
her in ze wine-press of his fury for years because she has 
trodden under foot ze Sabbat day.' What for do he say zat of 
my country ? I know very well zat ze people of Paris seek 



330 "ONE BIG, GKEAT HYPOCKITE." 

zere amusement on Sunday at Versailles, in ze teatre, in ze 
ball-room, in ze cafe chantant, ze Bois de Boulogne, and in all 
kinds of amusement zey seek zere recreation on Sunday. 
Now, sair, I agree zat, but what business have zat man to say 
God has cursed France because ze people go for amusement 
on ze Sabbat day, when zat very man keeps twelve men in his 
distillery to work all day Sunday ? You may call zat man, 
sair, very releegious, but I call him one big, great hypocrite. 
To go into ze fields is to go for pleasure, to hear ze birds sing 
is one delight, but to take ze beautiful grain God has given 
us, and to kill it, and out of ze rottenness of ze putrefaction 
of ze death obtain an agency zat does no good, but burns up 
men's bodies and sends zere souls to hell, according to his 
own releegion, is not zat worse zan pleasure on Sunday, eh ? 
I drinks my wine, but wiskey, ah, wiskey is ze most abomi- 
nation ting zat ever was made. Oh, zat man is very bad 
hypocrite." 

A minister of the gospel, in England, once said to me, 
"Mr. Gough, I think this is an unscriptural movement of 
yours." " Why so, sir ? " " Because I do not find any direct 
command in the Bible to form associations for the promotion 
of any particular virtue — and temperance is a virtue — or 
the suppression of any particular vice." " Well, sir," I said, 
" Did you not address a meeting that was called by the Early- 
closing Association ? " " Yes." " And did you not advocate 
the forming of such associations on moral grounds ? " " Yes." 
" Then, according to your doctrine, you advocated an unscrip- 
tural measure. If you take that ground against the temper- 
ance enterprise, you must take it against ragged-schools and 
apprentices' libraries, and it would sweep away nine tenths 
of the benevolent enterprises that are now the glory of Great 
Britain." Dr. Candlish - says it is a species of infidelity 
creeping into the church that demands a "thus saith the 



THE GKEAT STUMBLING-BLOCK. 331 

Lord " before a man will go out of the way to help a brother. 
The Rev. W. Reid said, "If by lifting a straw I injure my 
brother, I am as much bound to desist as if I read in the 
decalogue, ' Thou shalt not lift a straw.' " 

While our principle as a direct agency accomplishes just 
this one thing, and no other, as an indirect agency for good 
we hold it has claims on the sympathy and co-operation 
of all Christian men, and of all Christian ministers. The 
gospel is " The power of God unto salvation, to every one 
that believeth." How shall they believe unless they hear ? 
What is the great hindrance to their hearing ? Ask your city 
missionaries, ask the ministers of the gospel, inquire of all 
who are seeking to save men, " What is the great hindrance 
to men's hearing the gospel?" The reply will be, "Drunk- 
enness keeps more men from hearing the gospel than any 
other one agency." Now, if my principle is a lawful princi- 
ple (and the time has gone by for us to defend the principle 
of total abstinence as lawful), and by it I can remove the 
hindrance to men's hearing the gospel, then I demand the 
sympathy of those who love the gospel. It has done that, 
and it will do it. I could give you fact after fact, case after 
case. 

I often hear the excuse for drinking, " I cannot do without 
it ; it is necessary for me as a medicine." Now, with all due 
respect to the physician, I believe that taking alcohol as a 
medicine is, as a general thing, what we call — and it is very 
emphatic — " bosh." A clergyman of the Church of England 
told me that his wife would not become a teetotaler because 
she wanted her glass of ale at lunch and her glass of ale at 
dinner, and would have it. It seemed to be one of those cases 
where an excuse is needed. The physician said she might 
take it. She brought her little boy on a visit to London. 
On looking out of the window one day, he saw a woman come 



332 SAVED BY HER BOY. 

out of a public-house and fall down, and he said, " O mamma 
dear, look there ! What 's that ? " " It is a woman fallen 
down, darling." "What's the matter with her, mamma?" 
" She has been drinking too much beer, darling." " Is that 
what you drink, mamma ? " " Yes, darling ; but you know I 
take it as a medicine." The child said no more. 

When they went home, some days passed before anything 
occurred. One bright day he came bounding into the room 
where his mamma sat at lunch with her glass of ale, and said, 
" I feel so well, mamma, to-day. Are you well ? " " Yes, my 
dear." " Are you perfectly well, mamma ? " " Yes, dear, I 
am perfectly well." " Then what do you take medicine for, 
mamma?" She could not answer. Then the little fellow 
put his hands into the pockets of his knickerbockers, and 
said, " If you won't take any more beer, mamma, I will give 
you all my pocket-money till I am a man." " That was irre- 
sistible," said the clergyman, "and now my wife is an ab- 
stainer, and never touches wine or beer, under any circum- 
stances, nor does she need it." 

But it costs something to give it up. We want women to do 
something to help us. We want help, rather than patronage. 
I care but little for the patting on the back, and encouraging 
with a few commonplace words, and then being let alone. I 
remember once, in Boston, seeing a man with a horse and 
cart. The horse had a heavy load, and was going up a hill, 
and could not get along. The driver was very kind, and said, 
" Get up ! " But the horse did not get up. There was a 
dude standing close by, who looked as if he had just 
come out of a bandbox. Said he : " My man, you don't 
understand a horse. You don't manage right. You will 
never get that load up the hill in that way. That horse has 
got 'set.' Now you take hold of the horse and do just as I 
tell you. Don't stand just before him, stand back a little.. 



POWEK OF THE WILL. 



333 



Take hold of the horse's head. Stand back now. Don't 
stand right in front. Now stand sideways. Oh dear, you will 
never get your horse up the hill in that way ; " and so he 
went on. A negro, standing on the other side of the road, 
came across, and, putting his shoulder to the wheel, said, 
" Now, boss, give dat horse a little cut" and up the hill they 
went. Which was the better man, the dandy or the negro ? 




THE NEGRO AND THE DUDE. 



Give me the man who will help ; who will say, "I will he]p 
you : do your part, and I will do mine." 

A man can do what he will. That is doubtful only in cases 
where the will is weakened by constant indulgence. We ap- 
peal to you, then, to exercise your will in giving up that 
which is to you but a gratification, for the sake of those who 
cannot use it, taste it, or smell it, without longing for it with 
all the power a man has, and this is not their fault. I know 
a great many people say you are coddling the drunkard by 
that sort of language, and you are endeavoring to excuse 
drunkenness. No, I clo not. Drunkenness is a sin ; but it is 
21 



334 MY HOEEIBLE DKEAMS. 

a sin that in this life brings a penalty with it, while there are 
some sins that do not. I do not mean to say that getting 
drunk is the worst sin in the world, yet I have such a horror 
of drunkenness that the worst dreams I have are when I 
dream I am drinking. I get up sometimes and say, " O Mary, 
I have had such a horrible dream." " What was it ? " " I 
dreamed I was chewing tobacco and drinking rum, and ugh ! 
it tasted good" Oh, how I hate it, and, with all the power of 
prayer I have, I pray God to keep me from it. 

I am not one of those who believe in great sins and little 
sins. I believe my soul is bound to God by the chain of his 
moral law, and if one link of that chain is broken, my soul 
is as essentially severed from God as if every link were shat- 
tered, and must remain so till I am reconciled to Him whose 
law I have broken. That is my idea of sin. A sin is a sin, 
but this sin of drunkenness seems to embrace all others. It 
seems in itself to involve the wholesale violation of the deca- 
logue : for men do have other gods beside Him ; men do 
take the name of the Lord their God in vain ; men do dis- 
honor their fathers and their mothers; men do break the 
seventh commandment ; men do disobey his command with 
regard to the Sabbath ; men do steal ; men do kill ; men do 
bear false witness every day ; men do covet ; all through the 
influence of drink, — either directly or indirectly. 

I wish we could have meetings of moderate drinkers, and 
that some of the most prominent of them would reveal to us 
all the benefits they derive from it, and all the beauties of 
the system. Why should we have it ail our own way? 
Why should teetotalers hold meetings, and not liquor-sellers, 
drunkards, and moderate drinkers? We have it all our own 
way because there can be no reproach brought against the 
principle of total abstinence — pure and simple total absti- 
nence — from its bitterest opponents. Mark me, I am not 



i 



MORE SYMPATHY AND LESS FORMALITY NEEDED. 335 

anatomizing the characters and reputations of all total ab* 
stainers. By no means. I am speaking of the total absti- 
nence principle. What harm has it ever wrought in the 
community, directly or indirectly ? 

One word here in reference to the lack of sympathy with 
humanity in some of our churches. What we need in our 
religious meetings is more cordiality, more recognition of the 
claims of humanity. I have been into a church, a stranger, 
and have accepted the general invitation to partake of the 
communion. As a participant in that service, I am a recog- 
nized member of the church. I have partaken of the ele- 
ments, or the element rather — for I never touch intoxicating 
wine, even at the communion, and I believe I am right — I 
have partaken of the element, and felt I was in this way 
fulfilling the law of Christ, and showing forth the Lord's 
death until he should come, and it would have been most 
gratifying to me if a Christian hand had grasped mine as a 
brother's, or if a voice had said to me, " Good day, sir ; glad 
to see you here." But no ; every one walked out coldly and 
cheerlessly, and I have turned my back on them, going forth 
alone, and have gone away sad. 

Now, if it had been in an Odd Fellows' lodge, or a Free- 
masons' lodge, or a Good Templars' room, as soon as I was 
identified with the movement, as I was by that communion 
identified with the church, there would not have been a man 
in the lodge who would not have said, "I am glad to see 
you." Why should we not have that cordiality in the 
church ? 

I once heard a man say at a meeting : " We started a 
Young Men's Christian Association, and we succeeded very 
poorly in reaching young men. We spent a great deal of 
money. We had our reading-room, — a place where young 
men might read the daily and the illustrated newspapers. — 



336 



WHY HE KEPT HIS HAT OK 



and a library, with a warm room where they might sit and 
talk if they wished. We provided them with chess, checkers, 
and occasionally a little music ; but we did not seem to get 
on. One evening I saw a young man walking about the 
room with his hat on. I thought this was an evidence of 
contempt for us. I stepped up to him and said, ' Do you see 

that notice ; " Gentlemen 
-=* are requested to remove 
*■& their hats"?' 'Yes, I 
see it.' 'Well, why do 
you not take your hat off? ' 
He replied, 'I have been 
here every night for some three 
or four weeks, off and on, and no 
one has spoken a word to me ; 
so I thought, if I kept my hat on, 
perhaps some one would ask me to 
take it off, and I should get ac- 
quainted.' From that moment we 
saw what our work was, and we 
soon began to lay our hands on 
the young men, and now we have 
a men's Bible-class numbering some 
hundreds, and many have been converted. That one inci- 
dent opened our eyes." Why should the Church of Christ 
be shut to any individual who comes to the door. Oh I 
thank Him that He is to be our Judge, knowing all the 
circumstances of each case. Many a poor creature comes 
to the door of the church and is repelled. I say to re- 
formed drunkards, Do not be discouraged. The church 
is opening her doors on all sides for you. If she shuts 
her doors against you the Lord Jesus is ready to take 
you. His arms are wide open, and he will help you 




" HATS OFF.' 



EMINENT FELLOW-WORKERS. 337 

through all your difficulties and give you the victory over 
your foes. 

I plead on behalf of this movement, entreating you to 
give it — if not your whole influence — your best thoughts. 
We rejoice to-day that there is such a coming towards us 
on the part of those who have hitherto held aloof. When 
I was in England some thirty years ago, if we had engaged 
the vicar of a parish to preside at a meeting, we were 
wonderfully set up, whispering all round, " The vicar is 
to preside." Now we have four or five teetotal bishops; 
two of them have presided at my meetings, — the Bishop 
of Exeter and the Bishop of Rochester, — and I never 
heard stronger teetotal speeches from mortal man than from 
these men. Now such men are working with us. I am told 
that six or seven of the Queen's chaplains are teetotalers. 
The Church of England Temperance Society is embracing a 
large number of men and women. This society reminds me 
of a man who said, " I am wearing this hat out by degrees, 
for the rim is gone and there is a hole in the crown," — and 
the leaders of the Church of England Temperance Society 
are taking men in by degrees. They are willing to take 
them on the moderate ground, and they will take them on 
the ground of drinking at the social circle only, and they 
will take them as personal abstainers. 

I do not condemn them at all. I am glad of anything 
that tends to the great end of abolishing the drinking cus- 
toms, and I believe that the total abstinence movement to- 
day is advocated by such men and supported by such agencies 
and influences that no Christian man can engage in it, even 
in the very outskirts, without being drawn into the centre 
by the power of the attraction of the love of souls. There- 
fore I rejoice fully in this Church of England Temperance 
Society. And I find that everywhere men are willing to 



338 BETTY'S FIGHT WITH A BEAR. 

give us their countenance. You know I care but little for 
what is called patronage ; in fact, I do not like it. I care 
but little for those who are merely lookers-on. " You do the 
work, it is a good cause, but I am not identified with you." 
You know it is a good cause. 

These non-committal people remind me of a story I have 
often told. It is an old story, but you can scarcely get a 
new one unless you make it ; and often when you have in- 
vented the story, and used it, some other speaker will appro- 
priate it and say you stole it from him ; so it is as well to use 
the old story if it illustrates the point. There was a man 
who was something of a coward. He was in his house one 
day, with his wife, when a bear walked in. He was awfully 
afraid of bears. When this bear came in, the man looked 
round, not for a weapon of defence, but for a way of escape ; 
and, seeing a ladder leading to the rafters, he climbed the 
ladder and drew it up after him. His wife was a courageous 
woman. She seized a shovel. Putting her two children 
behind her, she faced the bear in their defence. As the 
animal approached, the shovel was raised, and the woman hit 
the bear a terrible crack, bringing his head between his legs. 
And there on the rafter sat her husband. 

Now that man's sympathies were all in the right direction. 
He had no sympathy with the bear and he really hoped that 
Betty would be very successful in her glorious enterprise. 
As the fight went on, he became excited. By and by he 
began to encourage her, and shouted, " Well done, Betty ! 
That was a good knock. Now take him on the other side," 
and so on till Betty hit the final blow and the bear gave 
a final kick. And then the husband came down from his safe 
retreat. " Well, that 's a bigger bear than I thought it was, 
Betty, and I consider we have done gloriously." When the 
work is done, " we" and when the work is to be done, "you." 



FIGHTING SIN. 341 

Now we ask for help, influence, co-operation in this work, 
believing that we shall in the end be successful. Every 
great movement is progressive. We cannot carry out our 
reform all at once. It may take generation after generation. 
What of that ? We should so identify ourselves with every 
great movement as to feel that we are co-operating with God 
and angels in preventing sin — that, it seems to me, is what 
we should aim at. A gentleman said to me once, " Mr. 
Gough, according to your teaching, the devil is stronger than 
God is." I am not a theologian. I do not know whether it 
needs any theological knowledge to rebut such an accusation 
as that. Satan is the god of this world, and the great object 
is to fight Satan and win the world back to God. And if 
we can co-operate with Him and His holy angels in rescuing 
this sin-cursed world from the grasp of Satan, then we who 
work shall cast our crowns before Him, laying our laurels at 
His feet, and shall worship Him who has subdued all things 
unto Himself, and who has honored us by making us co- 
workers with Him. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SLIPPERY PLACES — TRAPS FOE, THE UK WARY — PATHETIC 
SCENES AND INCIDENTS — HOME SHADOWS. 

Alsopp's Brewery— An Incident of My Visit to Old Virginia — Firm Con- 
victions — Ridiculous Arguments of "Women — Extracts From Letters I 
Have Received — When Does Drinking Become a Sin ? — How a Church 
Member Behaved at One of My Lectures — Moderate Drinking — How 
the Church Regards It — A Quaker's Advice to His Son — How Not to 
Get Drunk — The Power of Will — The Fakir of India — Cries of De- 
spair — The Curse of the World — The Little Cripple — A Pitiful Sight- 
Dreadful Afflictions — "I Am So Tired" — Pathetic Incidents — A 
Father's Prayer — Touching Home Scenes — " Hush ! Hush ! Hush ! " — 
Dealing With Facts — A Father's Sad Story — The Power of Appetite — 
A Minister's Experience — A Night of Agony — Wrestling with the De- 
stroyer — An Awful Fight — Onward, Upward, Victory. 




F there is no good in the drink 
as a beverage (and we have 
proved that in another place), 
why should we not battle 
against it? We mean to do 
that to the end, — yes, to the 
end. People say sometimes, 
" Do you think you will ever 
succeed ? " We succeed I Thank 
the clear Lord, it is not our work. 
Ours is the labor; in his hands are 
the results; we have nothing to do 
with them, except to be grateful when they come. "Am I 
right?" That is the great question, and then steadily on, 
and work. Visit one of the large breweries, see the inter- 
minable mass of warehouses and stacks of chimneys and 
342 



AN EXPLODED BELIEF. 343 

mountains of barrels, and you may say, as I said when I saw 
Alsopp's brewery : " Is it not very much like knocking your 
head against a stone wall to undertake to talk against all the 
great investments in the brewing and distilling business of 
the country ? " We are often asked : " What can you do ? 
Look at the moneyed interests, the millions of dollars in- 
vested in this business, and then at the drinking habits of 
the people," etc. Verily, a formidable array of opposing 
forces. 

I was in Virginia in 1846-47, in the palmy days, as they 
call them, of slavery; and, in conversation with my host, 
Mr. William Reed, on the subject of slavery (for in those 
days we could speak more freely with Southern slave-holders 
than we could with the miserable dough-faced apologists for 
slavery in the North), he said: "What are you going to do? 
What is all this agitation for in the North ? What do you 
expect to accomplish? You talk about England's buying 
the freedom of her slaves. So she did ; but they were so 
many thousand miles away. Here our slaves are born in our 
houses ; they are part of our families. It is a domestic insti- 
tution, a patriarchal institution; it is woven into the very 
domestic life of the people of the South. You cannot tear it 
out. Here are servants I have had in my house ever since 
they were born. They are now grown up. I respect them 
and I treat them well. You can't break up this system. Are 
you Northern people ready to pay five thousand million 
dollars, the estimated value of the slaves in the United 
States ? Five thousand million dollars ! Where are you 
going to get it? There is no use in talking about it. As 
long as the United States endures, so long will slavery be 
the peculiar institution, and, I believe, the cornerstone of our 
republic. So you may as well hold your tongue." 

But we did not hold our tongues. It is our privilege to 



344 EIGHT AGAINST WRONG. 

protest against wrong, though wrong sits on the throne. 
Well, we fought the battle in Kansas, Nebraska, and Cali- 
fornia, and won it. Then the slavery party determined to 
encroach on our territories, and enlarge the area of slavery, 
and you know very well the war came on. Five thousand 
million dollars! Yes. God took it out of men's hands 
altogether. The cry of the oppressed entered the ears of the 
Lord God of Sabaoth, and, at a sacrifice of half a million lives 
and millions of treasure, and amid blood and fire and smoke 
and tears, slavery was extinguished forever. 

Now, I say, what are millions in his sight when he wills ? 
And I would further say, that I believe he wills that every 
wrong shall cease, for he tells us to pray, "Thy will be 
done in earth as it is in heaven ; " and, as I have said in 
another place, there is a promise involved in that petition. 
We are never bidden to pray for that which is not to be, but 
for that which is to come. His will is to be done, and all 
wrong is to be trampled under the feet of the right. He 
wills when we will. Woe be to the man who stands in 
defence of a wrong, for it must be against God's will ; on 
such a one the responsibility rests, and it is an awful one. 
We are seeking to remove that which produces untold misery. 
We need the young men in their manly strength and vigor to 
help us. We want the respectability, the intelligence, the piety 
of the country to help us. We ask the women to help us by 
their gentle and winning influence, as well as by their vigor- 
ous intellects, to bring men to the point of total abstinence. 
Oh, I am grieved to find so many good women against us. 

I have received letters that make me think all the fools in 
the world are not dead. I never heard such ridiculous argu- 
ments in my life as I have heard from ladies in favor of 
moderate drinking. One of them writes : " Mr. Gough, it is 
all very well to talk against drunkenness, but do not be so 



A QUESTION FOR THEOLOGIANS. 345 

rabid as to talk against the drink, for it is a good thing." 
Drink " a good thing ! " And then comes the argument that 
so many women love, the scriptural argument. Now, I am 
not able to meet that, because I do not know whether the 
Saviour drank intoxicating wine or non-intoxicating wine. I 
know that he made wine, and I know that he made it by a 
miracle. And a gentleman told me that, because he made 
it by a miracle, he felt bound to use it, for it was a sanctified 
article of diet. I respected his reasons ; to be sure, I did. 
He was honest in his conviction. And when I said to him, 
" Why don't you eat barley bread ? — the Saviour manufac- 
tured barley bread by a miracle, and that is a sanctified article 
of diet as well as the wine," — he "didn't like barley bread." 
Ah, now we have it ! Don't you see ? that is just it. You 
will not eat barley bread because you " do not like it." I ask 
you to put away the wine which you do like, that you may 
bear the infirmity of a weaker brother, and fulfil the law of 
Christ by example as well as by precept. 

You say it is a sin to get drunk. Well, I am not theolo- 
gian enough to split hairs about that ; but I should like to 
ask some theologian to define just the time when it becomes 
sin. When does it become sin ? When a man gets drunk ? 
What is it to get drunk ? It is not a sin, you say, to drink 
a glass of liquor. " Oh, no ! that is not a sin." " Well, sup- 
pose I drink a glass of liquor, or you do, and it affects your 
head, and you are maudlin and silly ; that is a sin ? " " Yes." 
What does the sin consist of? Where is the sin? In drink- 
ing, or in the effect produced by the drink upon the brain 
and nervous system? I leave theologians to settle that mat- 
ter as they will. 

Once, when speaking in a church, I saw a man sitting with 
his feet on the back of one of the pews, eating apples, and 
spitting and puffing about, as if throwing contempt on all 



346 



A CONSPICUOUS MUNCHER. 



connected with the affair. I said to the minister : " Who is 
that man ? " 

" I am sorry to say, he is a member of my church." 

" What are you going to do with him ? " 

" I told some of the officers of the church to look after 
him to-night, for I saw the plight he was in." 

" Shall you not discipline him ? " 

"I will if lean." 

" I 'm glad I 'm not a member of your church ; if I was, I 
would get out of it 
to-morrow, if there is 
such a word as ' can ' 
in reference to a case 
so gross as that." 

" Mr. Gough," said 
the minister, "we can- 
not discipline him for 
drunkenness while 
there is so much mode- 
rate drinking, as it is 
called, in my church. 
That man will take a couple of glasses of brandy and water, 
and will then be in the state you see him ; but there are many 
men in my church who take six or eight glasses without getting 
drunk, and we cannot make any particular offence of that." 

We come then to moderation, so called. As I have said 
before, — I say now, — every man who becomes a drunkard 
becomes so in trying to be a moderate drinker, and he does it 
by argument, and by coming to certain conclusions. A man 
will say to me : " Oh, I can let it alone when I please." Yes, 
you can let it alone if you please. We will change the word 
"when" to "if." You can give it up if you please. But 
suppose you don't please, what then? Now, the possession 




ONE OF MY LISTENERS. 



A QUAKER'S ADVICE. 347 

of power is of no value unless I have the will to exercise that 
power. I have sometimes thought it was an awful fact that 
God has given to every man a will (I say it with reverence) 
independent of His will. Amid thunderings and lightnings, 
when the voice was so terrible that the people begged they 
might hear it no more lest they die, God spake these words : 
"Thou shalt not," and we can, and do, say, "I will." Christ 
says, " Come unto me," and we can, and do, say, " I will not." 
You say, " I can, but I won't." Why not say, " I can, and I 
will?" As a Quaker once said to his son: "John, thee can 
leave off drinking just as easily as thee can open thy hand." 
" How ? " " Why, when thee gets a glass in thy hand, and 
raiseth it to thy mouth, just open thy hand, and thee will 
never get drunk." So we say to a man, '-'•you can if you 
will"" You possess the power, but you have no will to exer- 
cise that power. I can open my hand if I please, — if I will. 
Suppose I do not please, and have no will to do it ; my hand 
remains closed, and it will remain closed till the nails grow 
into the flesh, and the arm grows rigid. Now, there comes a 
necessity for using that arm, I must use it ; my life depends 
on my using it ; and now I will use it, but I cannot. God 
have mercy on any young man who begins to feel the fetters 
of habit gall him, and shall go out as Samson did, saying, " I 
will shake myself as at other times," but finds the power 
gone ; he has the will in all its intensity, but no power, and 
he cries in bitterness of spirit, " Who shall deliver me from 
these terrible bonds." 

They tell us that in India there are fakirs, who stand with 
arms uplifted; their nails like eagles' claws, their muscles 
rigid, and their hands upright. Years ago, when they first 
held up their arms, you might have said to one of these 
fakirs : " Take down your arm." " I can if I please ; it is an 
act of my own free will." Go to that devotee now and say 



348 



A CRY OF DESPAIR. 



to Mm, "Take down your arm, friend." "I can't." "Well, 
but you told me you could." " Ah ! I could once ; but I 
have lost the power; my arm is rigid; I have no power 
over my nerves, and there it must remain; if it is ever 
again brought to my side, it must be by another agency 
than my own, wrenching and cracking my shrivelled sinews, 
and my arm will then hang at my side useless." And so 
with this influence, " I can, but I won't." There is many a 
drunkard who would with all his heart and soul, but he fears 
that he can't. I know of no more 
fearful cry than the cry of despair: "I 
can't give it up ! " I have held men's 
hands in mine, and looked in their faces 
while the tears streamed 
down their cheeks, and I 
have pleaded with them, 
for the love of their fami- 
lies, for the love of their ^^ 
country, and in view of 
their responsibility before 
God, to give up drink ; and 
they have cried out, "I 
can't." "But you can." 
"I can't." "God will 
help you." "He won't!" 
have cried to the very last. 

The difference between you, sir, and the man who staggers 
on the verge of perdition is this : you can, but you will not; 
and he would with all his soul, but cannot, — the power is gone. 
Nothing weakens a man's will and affects his self-control 
more than the influence of drink. You say, " I have a mind 
of my own." To be sure, you have ; but do you suppose that 
every man who becomes a drunkard had no mind of his own, 




DESPAIR. 



" Oh, I can't ! I can't ! " they 



AN ENCHANTING SCENE. 349 

and came into the world without any will-power or any facul- 
ties such as you possess ? "I have a mind of my own. I am 
not such a fool as to become a drunkard." Some of the 
brightest intellects, men of superb genius, have gone into 
utter darkness through the influence of drink. 

Did you ever see the sun set on a bright autumn day at 
the close of an Indian summer ? How mellow he grew as he 
sank in the west, so mellow and so soft that you could fold 
your arms and gaze into his face, and drink your fill of the 
enchanted scene. Have you never watched him until the 
upper disc was just visible against that ridge of mountains, 
and you have looked around and seen the tree-top and hill-top 
and landscape flooded with one gush of mellow light ; and 
you have looked again, and the sun was gone ; but its setting 
has been to you, in the remembrance, " a thing of beauty ; " 
it has mingled with all your dreams of the beautiful. Ah, 
how many men have arisen, or might have arisen, and cheered 
and warmed and illumined us with their beams, and whose 
setting would have been to us a glorious remembrance and 
a " joy forever ! " How many men have flashed before us 
like meteors, dazzling us with their brilliancy. We love not 
to think of their former brightness, because it is so pain- 
fully contrasted with the darkness into which, alas ! they 
have passed. Oh, it is pitiful to see the mind and the intel- 
lect and the genius all wrapped in a death-shroud of dark- 
ness, and to see a man capable of rising to a high, noble, and 
glorious position, become a mean, miserable, and sensual sot. 

We are told, and I have been told, " You temperance men 
exaggerate, you exaggerate the evils." One newspaper said 
my facts were "rather far-fetched and strange." Strange! 
When we describe the evils of drunkenness, will you tell us 
we can bring anything far-fetched ? If we searched into the 
depths of the nethermost hell we could bring up victims ; and 



350 A TERRIBLE AFFLICTION. 

I believe angels from heaven, with folded wings and sad 
faces, look upon this awful curse of the world. Far-fetched ! 
I ask any of my readers if this can be true. 

You have a bright and beautiful boy. He bounds into 
your room to-morrow morning, and lays his soft cheek against 
your face. As his little arms twine round your neck, how you 
love him ! What would you do, what would you not give, to 
save that child from curvature of the spine ? " What, what ? " 
What would you do to save that child from curvature of the 
spine? "What? Do? Anything!" What would you 
give ? " All I have in the world." What would you sacri- 
fice? "Every luxury under heaven." What would you 
suffer ? " Try me ! What would I not do, give, or suffer, 
rather than see that boy, so bright and beautiful, with his 
bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and rounded limbs so full of elas- 
ticity, a crawling cripple upon the floor ? Don't ask me ! 
I would give, do, or suffer anything." 

I was a guest at the house of a lady and gentleman who 
had a child that had fallen out of a swing when he was four 
years old. It was an extraordinary case. Physicians often 
came to see the child, the body had so strangely developed. 
When I saw him he was twenty-three years of age, and yet 
his arms and legs, hands and feet, were those of a child four 
years old. It was pitiful to see him upon his stomach, work- 
ing himself along the floor with his hands and feet, like a 
turtle. One day he said to his mother, " Ah, mother, I shan't 
trouble you much longer." " Trouble, darling, trouble ! You 
are the light of our home, you are the joy of our household. 
Trouble ! We are learning lessons of trust and faith and 
patience from you every day. When God takes you from 
us it will be a dark day for our home." " Yes," said the lit- 
tle fellow, looking up from the floor, " yes, mamma, but I am 
so tired ; and when I die I shall go to heaven, and when I am 
with the angels, I shall stand up straight." 



A FATHER'S PRAYER. 351 

Now there is beauty, loveliness, sweetness, and glory clus- 
tering around that crippled son. Is there any around a 
drunken son ? Is there ? Tell me. Is there any light but 
the light that comes lurid from hell ? Oh, it is pitiful ! 

What would you not do to save your child from epilepsy ? 
" Oh, dear me ! that is a worse case than the other." I was 
once a guest at the house of a gentleman, a minister of the 
gospel. He had a child afflicted with epilepsy. While we 
were sitting in the room we heard a strange gurgling noise. 
We turned and saw the child twisting round upon his heels, 
foaming at his mouth, his eyes turned inward. The mother 
rushed to the child ; the father dropped upon his knees ; and 
there fell from his lips such a prayer as I scarcely ever heard. 
" O thou Saviour of sinners, and thou Redeemer of men, have 
mercy on my boy ; for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft- 
times he falleth into the water ; there is no hope for him but 
from thee." Then he said to me, " When I remember what 
that boy was four years ago, the head of his class at school, 
and now see him stand before me with fingers stretched wide 
apart, crying 'Papa, I cannot think,' oh, it is breaking my 
heart to see my child growing idiotic ! It is breaking his 
mother's heart, too, and yet, sir, as I am a man and a minis- 
ter of the gospel, his mother and I would rather see him 
just like that than see him a drunkard." So would you. 
There is no man or woman who would dare to say that they 
would not rather the Almighty should smite their child as He 
will, than that the child should smite himself and become a 
drunkard. 

Some time afterwards I met this gentleman on Broadway. 
He said to me, " How do you do, Mr. Gough ? " I said, " How 

do you do, Mr. W ? How is Harry?" " O, Harry is 

well." "Is he cured?" "The Saviour loved that suffering 
child and took him home, and one anticipation I have is that 
22 



g52 DESOLATE HOMES. 

by and by in the better land, where there is no more sighing 
and no more crying, and no more suffering and no more 
dying, there I shall meet my Harry." Did you ever know a 
father talk like that of a boy who died a drunkard ? Did you 
ever hear of a father who talked like that of a boy who died 
a sot? No; on the contrary, there is no brightness in the 
memory, there is no joy in the remembrance, the very name 
is forbidden to be spoken ; hush, hush, hush ! 

Oh, I have been in homes concerning which it has been said 
to me : " If you go to that house, don't say anything about 
their eldest son — hush, hush ! It is a sad home ; they have 
taken down his portrait from the wall, they have removed his 
photograph from the album, for it was a noble face, and thej 
cannot bear to think of him as he was, his career and untimely 
end were so awful" 

Do we exaggerate the evil of drunkenness ? Can we exag- 
gerate when it draws its slimy length across the threshold oi 
your homes and twines itself around some loved and beautiful 
child ? I ask you, are our arguments or our facts far-fetched ? 
Bring them home, and the nearer home you bring them the 
more appalling they are. 

I deal with facts. Some say I have no logic. Very 
well, I never pretended to have any ; but I believe that the 
most important truths are those that, as a general thing, are* 
accepted as truths without any logic. It is much better foi 
me to state the truth plainly, so that you will accept it, 
than to undertake to prove to you by logic, even if I were 
able, that a truth is a truth absolutely, a truth positively, 
a truth most assuredly, a truth certainly, in all respects a 
truth, symmetrically a truth, etc. If I illustrate the truth 
in its practical working, I put life into it and show how the 
truth works in common life ; and that, for nine tenths of the 
common people, is much better, in my opinion, than logic. 



IN THE POWER OF A DEMON. 



353 



But I will deal with facts. I want to show something of the 
power of this appetite. 

A gentleman said to me : " It is very hard, after I have 
been fighting the drink all my life, that it should come at 
last into my house. I have six children, five daughters and 
a son. Four of my daughters are married, my youngest is 
living with me. My only son is dying." He had delirium 

tremens a second time. 
The physician, who knew 
him very well, and knew 
the whole family, gave me 
the details of this young 
man's case. He said that 
he went to him on the 
second attack and said to 
him: "Charley, you know 
me. You know I am your 
friend. You are going to 
have a hard siege of it, my 
boy, a very tough time ; 
but I think, with your 
constitution and my 
skill and God's provi- 
dence, I may pull you through and bring you on your feet ; 
but, Charley, if healthy blood again courses through your 
veins, never touch another drop. If you ever drink again, 
do not send for me ; this disease will come on you swiftly, 
and you are a dead man." The young man looked in his face 
and said : " Doctor, do you say I shall suffer ? What do you 
know about it ? I feel it creeping on me now. Oh ! — it — 
is — coming — doctor. If you can prove to me there is no phy- 
sical suffering in hell, I will cut my throat. There is no men- 
tal anguish that I can imagine which can compare with what 




oh! it is coming, doctor. 



354 



BEGGING FOE ONE SPOONFUL. 



I know is coming. It — is — coming — now — doctor. Oh, 
doctor, I have felt great spiders drawing their soft bodies 
with hairy legs all over rny face and creeping into my mouth. 
Green flies have been buzzing in my ears and crawling into 
my nostrils. Ah ! ah ! They — are — coming — now ! " And 




ONLY JUST A SPOONFUL. 



in five minutes two men were 
holding him in his agony. For 
ten days and ten nights he suf- 
fered unutterable torments. 

He got on his feet at last. The third day after he was able to 
get out of his bed he walked into the street, feeble and shaken, 
leaning on two sticks. He went into a saloon and said : " Give 
me a tablespoonful of brandy, just a spoonful. I need it very 
badly. Don't tell anybody about it. Only just a spoonful, I 
need it." The man gave it, and " Now," said that father, " he 
is dying in such agony that his family cannot look upon him," 



CONQUERING THE ENEMY. 355 

What do you think of an appetite like that ? What do you 
think of a power like that ? Let men break that ! I tell you 
that it requires great strength of mind, great firmness of pur- 
pose, and great decision of character to do it. Thank God, 
we have thousands in our ranks who have burst the fetters 
that bound them, who have trampled their enemy under foot, 
and who stand to-day free from the damning influences of 
drink. 

I speak particularly of the power of this appetite. We 
know well what men will do to gratify it, what they will sac- 
rifice, what they will suffer ; and when the pinch comes — oh, 
the battle ! I love to see such a man fight, don't you ? It 
is a grand thing to see him in such a struggle. I like to 
whisper in his ear, " Courage, my brother." 

A minister of the gospel said to me : " I was once a sad 
drunkard, and I signed the pledge. Many times I have been 
in the ditch. When I became converted I made up my mind 
I would study for the ministry. I was a student. I had no 
desire for the drink. I had an idea that my religion had driven 
all that out of me. The grace of God had taken away the 
appetite for drink, and the love of Jesus had taken away the 
love of it. I thought myself perfectly safe. I was invited 
out to dinner. If the gentleman had asked me to take a glass 
of wine, it would have been ' no,' or a glass of ale, ' no ; ' but 
he gave me some rich English plum-pudding pretty well satu- 
rated with brandy, and with brandy sauce over it. I thought 
nothing of it. I liked it. I ate it freely. I sent up my plate for 
a second helping. On returning to my study I began to want 
drink. I wanted it. The want began to sting and burn me. 
My mouth became dry, my nerves twitched, I ivanted it. 
Well, surely, if I go now and have some, — I have not had 
any for six years, — certainly if I take just one glass now, it 
will allay this sort of feeling and I shall be able to attend to 



g56 A TERRIBLE STRUGGLE. 

my studies. No ! I thought of what I had been, and what I 
expected to be ; and ' now,' I said, ' I will fight it.' I locked 
the door and threw the key away. Then commenced the 
fight. What I did that night I do not know. I know I was 
on my knees a good deal of the time, but what I did I do not 
know. Some one came in the morning about eight o'clock 
and knocked at the door. ' Come in.' ' The door is locked. 1 
I hunted about, found the key, and opened the door. Two 
of my fellow-students entered. 4 Why,' said one, ' what is the 
matter with you ? ' 4 What do you mean ? ' ' Why, look at 
your face.' They took me to the glass, and my face I saw 
was covered with blood. In the agony of wrestling with my 
appetite for drink, I had torn the skin from my forehead 
with my nails, Look at the scars now. My appetite cried 
through every nerve and fibre of my system. Thank God, I 
fought it ; but it was forty-eight hours before I dared to go 
upon the street." 

Oh, it is an awful fight, an awful fight ! It makes a man 
old before his time, it sometimes sears and marks him, and 
leaves scars which will never be effaced. Young men, under- 
stand that it is a hard fight to break this appetite when it fas-* 
tens itself upon you. And, moderate drinker, respectable 
moderate drinker, are you not willing to give up that which 
may be to you a lawful gratification, if, by giving it up, you 
may be so dignified as to stoop to the weakness of a poor un- 
fortunate brother, and help him ? This is what we seek to do 
in our movement, not only to prevent, but to cure ; and by 
God's help we shall persevere. Discouragements meet us„ 
fears assail us, enemies attack us, and even friends fail us ; we 
will not fear. Though a host encamp against us, of this we 
will be confident, " work done for God, it dieth not ; " and 
though we may grope at times in the dark, yet, thank God, 
light from the mountain-top sends forth the sharp outline, of 



ONWARD, UPWARD, VICTORY. 357 

shadows upon our path, that tell us day is breaking, a day of 
triumph, a clay in which the bonds shall be loosed, a day in 
which the oppressed shall go free, a day in which there shall 
be a jubilee, when every drunkard shall be redeemed from 
the dominion of drink, and the sigh of the last weeping wife 
be hushed, and the last little child be led into the path of 
peace and safety. 

That day is to come, but we are now in the midst of con- 
flict. Yet in our warfare no blood is shed, we mean no harm 
to anyone. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, 
but mighty through God to the pulling down " of the strong 
fortresses of drunkenness. We are engaged in a bloodless, 
peaceful conflict, and shall continue to be so to the end. We 
say as the little drummer did when taken prisoner and led into 
the camp of the enemy. They told him to beat the drum. 
" Yes," said he, " I will beat the drum for you, though you ask 
me to do it in insult," and he beat a reveille. " Now," said 
they, "beat an advance," and he did so. " Now beat a charge," 
and he beat the charge. " Now beat a retreat." " No," said 
the little fellow, " I never learned to beat a retreat." We 
have no such word as retreat in our vocabulary, it is all 
onward, upward, victory ! 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE? — WAIFS AND STRAYS OF CITY 
STREETS — LIFE IN RAGGED HOMES — HOMELESS CHILDREN. 



Boys of the Street — Danger of Chaffing Them — Can They Be Rescued?— 
A Scene I Once Witnessed — Training-Schools of Crime — Life Below the 
Surface — A City Slum — Dens of Iniquity and Vice — Filth and Squalor 
on Every Side — Herding Together Like Animals — My New Pair of 
Boots — Trying Them to See How They Fit — I Am Assailed by Swarms 
of Boys — "Boots! Boots!" — Pelted with Potatoes and Carrots — My 
Ignominious Flight — The Boys and the Pumpkin Seeds — An Anxious 
Farmer — An Extraordinary Story of Crime — Appalling Facts — An 
Affecting Story of Hospital Life — Two Little Invalids — One Crushed, the 
Other Starved — " Bobby, Did You Never Hear of Jesus ?" — Propping Up 
the Sick Boy's Arm — Dead; His Little Hand Held Up for Jesus — A 
Street Scene in London — The Claims of Humanity — The Burning 
Ship — A Noble Act — True Heroism. 



T is not of the heathenism of 
foreign lands, but of the 
heathenism in Christendom; 
not of the worship of idols 
in distant climes, but of the 
worship of Bacchus in a 
Christian country; not of 
the victims of Juggernaut, but of 
the victims of the drink among us, 
that we are treating. And it is a 
serious question. It affects all classes 
of society, and therefore all have an 
interest in the matter. Perhaps it will be quite as well to be 
as practical as possible, and to speak of the responsibilities 
of society. Who is responsible for all this terrible evil and 
suffering ? 

358 




MICROSCOPIC SIGHT. 



359 



Many say, " The drunkard is responsible ; upon him pour 
out the vials of your wrath." Speak as you choose about the 
drunkard, — speak of him, if you will, as a beast, as an out- 
cast, — but that is not my forte. Let us for a moment con- 
sider the influences that are brought to bear upon men ; let 
us consider the circumstances. We will visit, if you please, 
the boys of the street. How keen and sharp they are. If 
you undertake to " chaff" one 
of them, in nine cases out of 
ten you will get the worst of it ; 
they are so sharp and quick in 
retort. On one occasion, a very 
stout man — as the Frenchman 
said, "Vary moch developed" 
— was walking through the 
streets, when one of these little 
fellows stood before him, and he 
said, "Boy, don't you see me?" 
" Yes, sir, I can see you with the 
naked hye." "Well," said he, 
"get out of my way." "Which 
vay round, guv'nor?" the boy .^ 
retorted. They are quick, sharp, < 
keen, and wonderfully astute. 
In banter, sarcasm, and bold repartee, your boy is a fool to 
them. What if all these sharp intellects, this acuteness, this 
strange intelligence, were trained for humanity, for God, for 
Christ, and heaven, instead of being trained to prey on society, 
for crime, for Satan, and perdition ? 

Do we not make a fearful mistake, as Christians, if we do 
nothing for their rescue? and shall we not pay a terrible 
price for our neglect? 

Come with me, and I will show you a scene I once wit- 




I CAN SEE YOU WITH THE 
NAKED HYE." 






360 



LIFE IN CITY STREETS. 



nessed. Come from your pleasant home, where children 

trained for purity and heaven climb upon your knee. Come 

from your 

family altar. 

Come from 

the comforts 

and luxuries 

that God has 

given you, and 

see where 

these children 

live. Turnout 

of this mag- 
nificent street 
of palaces, and 
look at a new 
world. Every 
grade of exist- 
ence, as you 
advance, be- 
comes darker, 
filthier, fouler, 
and more de- 
graded. Sick- 
ening odors, heavy with dis- 
ease, come from open cellars ; 
oaths ring out from subterranean 
dens. Here, thronging the filthy 
sidewalks, are children with no 
sunshine in their faces, children who are a walking heap of 
rags, children who often hear a mother swear, but have never 
heard her pray; children who will occupy prisons, peniten- 
tiaries, poor-houses, or worse. Can they be rescued f Here 




A TRAINING-SCHOOL OF CRIME. 



DENS OF INIQUITY AND VICE. 361 

they are, bad, precocious. Here they live. This broken door 
hangs by a single hinge. No fear of burglars here. Enter ! Is 
this a cage of wild animals ? No, these are men and women and 
children, not beasts and their cubs. Every square foot of the 
filthy floor has some occupant, — the wretched, in rags ; the 
drunken, in their debauches ; gray hair and auburn locks; old 
and young; black and white ; the sick and suffering; the inno- 
cent and guilty, — all herding together. Here the robber brings 
his plunder, the beggar his refuse food ; here, too, the shame- 
less girl — God help her — brings her horrible earnings. Here 
they sleep and grovel. Here they drug conscience with poi- 
soned liquors. Here they spend their lives, and here, in the 
dark, many die. Such scenes are to be witnessed in nearly every 
large city to-day, within sound of the church bells. Oh, they are 
a hard set ! They drink, and swear, and lie, and resist control. 
True, their sins of commission are awful ; but what of our 
sins of omission ? As we gaze with horror upon these human 
beings, and shudder at their degradation, must not some 
of us say, " I am verily guilty concerning my brother? " Do 
you wish to repair this blunder of indifference and neglect? 
Read the reports of Homes of Industry, Homes for the 
Friendless, Homes for the Magdalens, Night Refuges for the 
Destitute, Newsboys' Lodging-Houses, and kindred enterprises 
of benevolence. Then see what is being accomplished in the 
Mission Schools, and like institutions. But we want some- 
thing more than mere institutions. Let the rich men, out 
of their abundance, invest in clean, well-ordered, and cheap 
lodging-houses ; open parks, where the poor can have the 
liberty of the rich. Provide for them cheap and wholesome 
recreations, pleasure excursions, and the like. I believe we 
make a fearful mistake when we neglect these little ones, 
these children who are to form part of the future population 
of this great country. One of the most interesting, as well 



362 A LEAF FKOM MY LONDON EXPERIENCE. 

as one of the most benevolent, enterprises, is that of sending 
poor city children on excursions into the country. One or 
two leading newspapers of New York city, and the Five 
Points Mission, have done grand work in this direction. 

Now let us go into the streets and see one and another of 
these "old" children. Hard life makes them prematurely 
old and precocious. I know they are impudent. To be 
sure they are, and so would you be in their case. Impu- 
dent ! Why, I remember when I was in London many years 
ago, I bought a pair of boots, — those waterproof boots that 
buckle up to the belt; and I said to my wife, "Now before I 
pack these boots, I will try them on and see how they fit." 
I ran out into Drury Lane and White Hart Street, and into 
Bedford Street (I was stopping in Norfolk Street then). I 
went up Drury Lane all right, but when I passed into White 
Hart Street I heard the cry of " Boots ! Boots ! " And soon 
from every window, doorway, and alley seemed to come the 
cry of " Boots ! Boots ! " Sol began to quicken my steps, 
and I heard the youngsters quickening theirs after me. Soon 
they swarmed on every side of me. I ran, they ran. They 
pelted me with potatoes and carrots. When I reached Bed- 
ford Street, puffing for breath after my sharp run, I heard 
the cry of " Boots ! Boots ! " with merry laughter, dying 
away in the distance. They are an awfully bad set of boys! 
I know they are. 

Now unless " society " interposes to prevent the degrada- 
tion of this class of the community, it must pay the price of 
its neglect. This is inevitable. We set down certain rows 
of figures under each other, and then we are startled because, 
when we add them up, they amount to such a large total. 
But figures do not lie. When we put seed into the ground 
we may lay our solemn injunction upon it that it shall not 
germinate, but it will grow and bring forth fruit after its 



II 

ft o 




A NEW WAY TO PLANT PUMPKIN SEEDS. 



365 



kind. Seed will germinate. A farmer set two boys plant- 
ing pumpkin seeds. "Now, boys, put all these seeds in the 

ground between the rows 
of corn, and then you 
may go fishing." At it 
they went. But it was 
slow work, and the seeds 
were many. Three o'clock 
came, and almost four, 
and there were lots of 
seeds yet to plant. The 
youngest said: "If we 
stop to plant all these 
seeds, we shall have no fishing. Let 's 
put 'em under this rock." "Agreed." 
So, raising the heavy stone, they de- 
posited the seeds, and went fishing, 
farmer said, 




A NAUGHTY PAIR 



At night, the 

"Boys, did you put all them 

pumpkin seeds in the ground ? ' 

" Oh, yes." Time went on, 

and the farmer discovered that 

on a certain part of the ground 

the pumpkins did not grow. 

They were coming up all right 

between the rows of corn up 

to this point but no further. 

" Boys, are you sure you put all 

them pumpkin seeds in the 

ground?" "Yes." Time still 

went on. No pumpkins on a 

part of the field ! At last the farmer discovered a 




large 



cluster of vines climbing and stretching in luxuriance over a 



366 A MOTHER OF CRIMINALS. 

large rock, and, on lifting it up, the truth stood revealed that 
the seed had been hidden under the rock. 

Let me. give you one fact. Mr. Dugdale, of the New 
York Prison Association has investigated the whole matter. 
Over a hundred years ago, a little neglected waif and her 
three sisters were floating about the villages and towns on 
the Hudson River. For a few dollars they might have been 
provided with some instruction, and have been placed in a 
respectable farmer's family, and have grown up — as many 
similarly cared for have done — and been mothers of honest 
men and virtuous women. But Margaret was left to grow 
up in the lanes and roads, sometimes fed, sometimes hungry ; 
in the winter in the poor-house, in the summer a tramp, 
sleeping in the fields. Fifty dollars would have saved that 
girl. But she fell naturally into vicious courses. What do 
you expect of children thus brought up? Do you expect 
these girls to become as pure and sweet and lovely as your 
children who go to school every day and to Sunday-school every 
week ? That girl fell into bad habits, and her son became the 
progenitor of a distinctive criminal line. As the children of 
Margaret and her sisters grew up, they shifted to the poor- 
house, to vagrancy, and to crime. Some were petty thieves; 
others were bolder criminals ; some were tramps ; and 
others were even worse. Again the line extended, and 
the criminal qualities became intensified. Many became 
drunkards, lunatics, or idiots. And now the descendants 
number over 1,000, of whom 140 were convicted criminals, 
and have spent in the aggregate over 140 years in prison. 
Margaret's descendants alone spent over seventy-five years 
in prison, averaging over one year each. Now reckon the 
crop if you can. Count the cost, to the country, of this 
pauperism and crime ; the loss of property, the prison ex- 
penses, the moral taint reaching far beyond the control of 



A KEMAEKABLE STORY OF CRIME. 367 

society; and, tell me, Is not society responsible in a great 
degree for the crime, degradation, and drunkenness, that 
curse the country? Oh, for some moral Hercules to strangle 
these serpents of vice that are enfolding and destroying so 
many all around us.* 

But to return for a moment or two to the children. Did 
you ever talk to them? " Oh, yes! I have talked to them. 
They are very saucy." How did you talk to them? You 
take a boy well dressed, with a little white collar on, and his 
hair nicely combed, giving evidence of a mother's care ; by 
his side stands a ragged boy, toes out of his shoes, elbows out 
of his jacket, hair uncombed and sticking out of his cap ; yet 
the latter is just as good-looking a boy as the other. Now, 
you talk to them ! You do not talk to them in the same 
tone of voice. You will talk to the rough boy roughly, and 
to the smooth boy smoothly. You say to the nicely-dressed 
boy, " Well, my little man, I hope you like your school, and 



* In addition to the facts given above, Mr. Dugdale, in a little book entitled 
the " Jukes," gives some startling statistics and estimates in regard to the pos- 
terity of Margaret and her sister, which he calls by a fictitious name, the 
" Jukes " family. 

The Jukes grew so numerous and so depraved that the name of their family 
became a term of reproach. A few items in Mr. Dugdale's estimates are here 
given of the cost of the Jukes family to the community at large. 

Number of pauperized adults 280 

Number of arrests and trials 250 

Number of criminals and offenders 140 

Number of years depredations of 60 tbieves, at 12 years eacb . . . 720 

Number of lives sacrificed by murder 7 

Cost of maintenance of paupers $47,250 

Cost of maintenance of prisoners 28,000 

Cost of depredation of tbieves 86,400 

And so he goes on reckoning up the various items of expense from disease and 
pauperism and crime and waste of life and vice of various kinds, till he reaches a 
sum total and exclaims — 

" Over a million and a quarter of dollars of loss in 75 years, caused by a single 
family 1,200 strong, without reckoning the cash paid for whiskey, or taking into 
account the entailment of pauperism and crime on the survivors in successive 
generations, and the incurable disease, idiocy, and insanity growing out of this 
debauchery, and reaching farther than we can calculate." 



368 TALKING TO A SUIT OF CLOTHES. 

learn your lessons, like a good little boy." To the other you 
say, in a rough, sharp tone, " Who do you belong to ? What 
are you doing here ? Eh ! " Take these boys and change 
their appearance. Put the good clothes on this boy, and 
wash him and make him clean, and clothe the other in rags, 
and you speak to him as roughly as you did to the other. 
You do not talk to the boy, you talk to the clothes. You 
forget that under rags and dirt may beat a heart full of 
human sympathy and with a longing for human love. You 
forget what makes these boys what the}^ are. On your way 
to the Sunday-school with your boy, as you pass the corner 
of the street, you may see boys collected, pitching coppers on 
Sunday morning, boys who will swear, lie, and steal; you are 
thankful your boy is not like these. What made him differ- 
ent from them? Nothing but his education and training. 
You may place the three-year-old boy of the best family in 
the land in the hands of some horrible hag, and let her train 
him, and he will swear, lie, thieve, and pitch coppers on 
Sunday, just the same as those of whom I have been speak- 
ing. Education and training make your boy what he is; 
education and training make these other boys what they are : 
but the difference in the education and training of your boy 
and those boys is as wide as the difference between heaven 
and hell. "Oh," you say, "it is no use doing anything for 
them, they are such impudent children, they are such a rude 
set." Ah, my friends, we know better. I have been more 
cheered by results of work among children than I have 
among adults, over and over again. I could give you fact 
after fact. Let me give you one. A poor little fellow 
was picked up in the street, with both thighs crushed by a 
dray. He was carried to a hospital. By his side was tem- 
porarily placed, from the same slum, a little fellow who was 
very ill with the famine fever, a disease caused by hunger 



A STORY OF HOSPITAL LIFE. 3^9 

and bad air. He lay side by side with this broken-legged 
little boy. Creeping up to him he said, " Bobby, did you 
never hear of Jesus ? " 

"No, I never 'eard o' him." 

" Bobby, I went to the Mission School once, and they 
told me that Jesus would take you to heaven when you die, 
and you would n't never be hungry no more, if you 'd ax 
him." 

" Oh, I don't know no sich great big gentleman as he is; 
and if I did, he would n't speak to a poor boy like me." 

"In the Mission School they told me he would. Don't 
you want never to be hungry no more?" 

"Oh, just don't I?" 

" Then you ax him." 

"How could I ax the gentleman if I don't know 
where he lives? and if I did know, my leg is broke, and I 
couldn't go." 

"Bobby, they told me in the Mission School that Jesus 
passes by, and we sunged about Jesus passing by, and teacher 
told us it means he comes round. How do you know he 
bean't coming round this 'ere hospital to-night ? And if he 
should, and you was watching for him, you could see him, 
and then you could ax him." 

" I could n't watch for him, my legs ache so awful ; and I 
could n't keep my eyes open." 

" But I say, Bobby, you can hold your hand up, and if he 
should come round and see your hand up, he 'd know you wos 
arter something." He held his hand up, but it dropped. 
He held it up again, and it dropped. He held it up the third 
time, and as it dropped he burst out crying, and said, " I '11 
give it up, I can't hold my hand up no longer." 

" Bobby, I don't want my pillow. You let me prop your 
elbow up with it." 

23 



370 



MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR CIRCUMSTANCES. 



And the child — whom, perhaps, you would sweep off your 
doorstep, or turn away from with disgust — took his own hos- 
pital pillow, and, placing it under the elbow of his sick com- 
panion, propped up his arm. In the morning the little fellow 
lay dead, with his hand held up for Jesus. You may search 
the world over, and you cannot find a grander illustration of 
faith, trust, and confidence than was manifested in that little 
fellow who had been in the Mission 
School but once. Now, then, in judging 
these little creatures, let us make allow- 
ances, and try to help them. 
What do we know of 
circumstances when we 
of intemperate people? 
How irritating they 
are ! They will 
drink ! Mark, I 
am not palliating 
or excusing the 
sin of drunkenness. 
But I tell you we 
condemn drunken- 
ness among what 
we call the lower 
classes, and dare not say anything about the evil among the 
aristocracy. It is just as degrading for a nobleman to get 
drunk as it is for a costermonger. Still, what do we know 
of the circumstances of the case ? What do we know of the 
history of the man ? 

I was once walking in one of the parks of London, and 
inside the rails lay a girl asleep, perhaps drunk, I did not 
know which. She was ragged and slip-shod, resting her 
head on one hand, and the other lay listlessly by her side. I 




ADVERSITY. 






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LIFE'S CONTRASTS. 



373 



looked at her, and thought what a contrast to that beautiful 
woman within a few feet of her, reclining in her carriage, with a 
footman to do her bidding, clothed in rich apparel, and faring 
sumptuously every day ! And yet, according to the Scripture, 
is not the Lord God the Maker of them both ? Is not this 
girl's hand as delicately ., « * 

formed and as curiously *Jfr2 
constructed as the hand 



that lies on the velvet 
ion, sparkling with gems? 
not life as great a mystery 
one as in the other? Is b 
immortality as great a 
boon ? We look with 
admiration on one, 
bow to her with re- 
spect; we hold our 
garments as we come 
near the other, and 
thank God we are not 
like her. Do we know anything 
of the circumstances that may have 
brought that poor girl here ? 

I believe in humanity, and its claims upon us. We call 
men heroes who do great deeds ; and they are heroes. We 
admire heroes. We glory in heroism. A large ship, carry- 
ing some four hundred sailors and soldiers, with their offi- 
cers, besides women and children, took fire in mid-ocean. 
When all hopes of saving the ship were given up, the boats 
were examined, to ascertain how many could be saved. Only 
one hundred and twenty men, with their quota of officers, 
besides women and children, could be taken in. Then they 
drew lots; and as each man drew the lot that doomed 




Vh 



PROSPERITY. 



374 ^N OCEAN HORROR. 

trim to stay by the burning ship, with face a shade paler and 
lip quivering he took his stand amidships, till two hun- 
dred and eighty doomed men stood together. Then they 
placed the women and children in the boats, and the 
men were employed in passing provisions and water to their 
more fortunate comrades. One sailor, with tears in his eyes 
(and they were manly tears), leaning over the bulwarks, said, 
" I say, shipmate, if you get ashore I wish that you would 
see that my wife gets my back pay. God bless her, she 
will need it badly; she and the little ones. Good-by." 
Another said, "Do you think you can catch this 'ere, 
if I chuck it to you? It is the Bible my mother gave 
me when I left home. If you get ashore, tell her I have 
found out how a fellow feels when the angels rejoice because 
he has changed his tack. God bless her ! " 

When all but the officers had passed over the side, one 
young lieutenant, clasping his hands, dropped upon the deck, 
crying out, " Oh, my wife and my children ! " A brother officer 
lifted him on his feet. " My brother, we have fought together, 
messed together, camped together, prayed together ; we love 
each other, you and I. You have a lovely wife and two sweet 
children. I have seen them in your own happy home. I have 
none. I am a bachelor. I have neither father nor mother,, 
brother, sister, wife, child, kith, nor kin. No heart would 
leap at my coming, and no eye be dim should I never return. 
I shall take your place on the deck, and put you in the boat." 
" No ! no ! no ! " " Yes, my brother, yes ; think of the children 
that will clamber on your knee : only tell them I did it." 
" No ! no ! oh, no ! " " It is but the chance of a lot, my 
brother ; it might have been you, and it shall be me. You 
shall go into the boat." He threw him in, — the last officer 
to leave the ship. " It is all right. Cast off ! " There he 
stood, with folded arms, till the boats had rowed to a safe dis- 



TRUE HEROISM. 



375 



tance, and then the oarsmen rested on their oars. Here stood 
the two hundred and eighty men, with the noble officer in 

their midst, waving adieus to 
those in the boats, until the fire 




DOOMED. — THE BURNING SHIP IN MID-OCEAN. 



reached the magazine, when, with a terrible explosion, they 
were blown into eternity." That is true heroism. And 
just in proportion as you stoop, — ah, yes, and you are digni- 



376 SYMPATHY FOE THE UNFOKTUNATE. 

fied when you do so stoop to the weakness of your fellow- 
creatures, for the purpose of helping them up, — just so near 
do you approach to heroism ; doing or enduring for the sake 
of others. And I tell you that those men and women who, 
by the circumstances of their lives, and by the influences of 
society, are led into temptation, and through human weak- 
nesses are drawn into sin and suffering, demand your sympa- 
thy and your help, to lift them up. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



NOW AND THEN; OK, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 
SONAL EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES. 



PER- 



Fast, Present, and Future — What We Owe to the Past — Our First 
Century — One Hundred Years Ago — A Bundle of Stamps — Exciting 
Times — A Memorable Snow-ball Fight — Discovering Tea in Her Hus- 
band's Shoes — " Disperse, Ye Rebels " — Determined Patriots — " Who 
Is That Person ? " — " Will He Fight ? " — Anthony Burns, the Fugitive 
Slave — How He Was Marched Through the Streets of Boston — Wonder- 
ful Progress — Fifty Years Ago — Grand Achievements — How We 
Printed When I Was a Boy — The Light of Other Days — Travelling in 
the Olden Time — Personal Experiences — Three Miles an Hour — "I 
Must Take a Pill" — My Ride on the First Railroad Built in America — 
The Electric Telegraph — Reminiscences of My Boyhood — The Tele- 
phone—The "Fire Cart" —An Old Couple's Idea of Telegraphing — A 
Negro's Description — The " Puir Whales " — Jonathan Hulls — "I'm the 
Nineteenth Century." 

OW and then " is a term often 
used to signify "occasion- 
ally," "once in awhile," etc., 
but there are thoughts, per- 
haps, worthy of utterance, 
suggested by its higher and 
broader significance, as we 
stand in the "now" that is, and con- 
template the "then" that was, and 
look into the future that will be. 
So that I might announce, Thoughts 
on the Past, Present, and Future. 
To-day we reap the fruit of the workers of the past, and 
in the by-and-by another generation shall garner the harvest 
sown by the workers of to-day. To-day we can reckon our 
gains from the past, and it is well to acknowledge the debt. 

377 




378 HOW THE KEVOLUTIOX WAS BEGUN". 

As a nation we have celebrated the events of one hundred 
years ago, and commemorated the birthday of our nation, — 
a prosperous republic, that has been solving the problem of 
government by the people for a century, — and now shall we 
not call up the past, the far-off " then," and refresh our minds 
by a brief review of the scenes fraught with such mighty re- 
sults to us to-day ? 

One hundred years ago the people of the good city of 
Boston were in great perplexity about a bundle of paper, — 
where to put it, what to do with it. They could not receive 
it, for that would be to admit the right of Great Britain to 
tax them. Then came burnings in effigy, processions, meet- 
ings, and preparations for a struggle, till the stamp act was 
repealed. But that stamped paper carried more value than 
all the notes of the banks. 

Then came more oppression, and the citizens pledged 
themselves not to import or use more British goods. Recre- 
ant merchants were watched, and British soldiers were sent 
into the streets to disperse assemblies of the people. 

One February day, in 1770, some boys were carrying about 
caricatures of merchants who had imported goods, when an 
informer destroyed the pictures, and was hooted by the boys. 
He seized a gun, and threatened them, to which they re- 
plied by snowballs. He fired, and killed a boy ; the first per- 
son slain in the beginning of the Revolution. Men felt at 
the funeral of that boy that a great act in the world's history 
had opened over his grave. Snowballs became significant. 
Eleven days after, occurred the first great riot, begun by 
snowballing a sentinel. The soldiers gathered, more snow- 
balls were thrown ; they fired, and three persons were killed, 
and the Revolution was begun. Not all the cannon in the 
Franco-Prussian war sent balls weighted with such results to 
the world as those few snowballs flung in the streets of Boston 
one hundred years ago. 



THE BOSTON TEA PARTY. 



379 



Soon came the affair of the tea, so well known to 
every American schoolboy. The destruction of that tea 
was the true declaration of war against Great Britain by 
her North American colonies. Fifty gentlemen put their 
necks in peril, and wives and children in fifty homes in 
Boston asked no questions that night as to where the head 
of the house had been. We are told that one wife, thinking 

her husband's 
shoes might be 
damp, brought 
his slippers to 
him, took the 
shoes up to dry 
||n them, and found 
^ a quantity of 
r tea inside. She 
concealed her 
consternation, 
and asked no 
questions till 
the King of 
England ceased 
to hold power 
in the Colonies. 

The tea destroyed in Boston was worth more to the world 
than all the spices of the East. 

It seems useless to tell over the old, well-known tale of 
hardship, patriotism, and heroic endurance, that characterized 
that great struggle ; but it is so full of beauty, wonder, pathos, 
tragedy, and sublimity that no history is, or should be, more 
attractive to Americans than this. How, when Gage de- 
termined to destroy the military stores at Concord, young 
men, on fleet horses, knocked at the house doors, rousing the 




TELL-TALE SHOES. 



380 OLD-TIME PATKIOTISM. 

minute-men, while a mysterious light, streaming from the stee- 
ple of one of the Boston churches, proclaimed that peril was 
at hand ; and how, after the reply by musket-shots to Pitcairn's 
demand, " Disperse, ye rebels," the British troops made their 
way back through Concord to Boston. Major Buttrick, leap- 
ing forward, cried out, " Fire, fellow-soldiers, for God's sake, 
fire ! " At noon, that day, a splendid detachment of British 
soldiers marched gaily out of Boston, their band playing 
" Yankee Doodle," their officers boasting that at the mere 
sight of the grenadiers' caps the rebels would take to their 
heels; yet before the evening gun was fired, foot-sore and 
jaded, the British soldiers flocked back to their quarters, to 
find themselves prisoners in Boston. How the little band of 
patriots determined to gain possession of Bunker's Hill, and, 
commanded by Colonel Pepperell, who declared, "I am re- 
solved never to be taken alive," threw up the entrenchments 
by night. When the sun rose, the redoubt was seen with 
astonishment by Gage that morning. How, under a scorch- 
ing sun, and a storm of shot and shell, from Copp's Hill and 
the war-sloop "Lively," the patriots bravely pursued their 
work where now a lofty column overlooks prosperous cities, 
the fair, peaceful landscape, and the calm water. Prescott, 
that day, in his calico frock, as serene as if on parade, issued 
his orders to the little band of resolute men. "Who is that 
person?" said General Gage, as he stood on the opposite 
side of the Charles River. " My brother-in-law, Colonel Pres- 
cott." " Will he fight ? " " Ay, to the last drop of his blood." 
How Joseph Warren came, as a volunteer, inquiring where 
his musket would do the most service. " Go to the redoubt ; 
you will there be covered," said Prescott. " I came not to 
be covered," said Warren. " Tell me where the fight will be 
the hottest." As the two thousand men marched up to 
attack them, at Prescott's order, " Fire ! " the volley swept 



THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. 



381 



their ranks; and, wavering and advancing in the teeth of 
that fearful discharge, the British carried the redoubt ; but 
not till the grenadiers and light infantry had lost three 
fourths of their men, and the dead covered the ground ; and 
only when resistance was fruitless did Prescott give the order 
to retire. The battle of Bunker Hill manifested significantly 
that the colonists could fight, and with a steadiness and cour- 
age that proved them capable of coping with the disciplined 
troops of the mother country. 




THE FUGITIVE SLAVE. 



This is history. And I might tell of the struggle in the 
long years afterward, but I forbear. Shame on those who 
tell us we love our country too well. We are bound to cher- 
ish our free institutions, bought for us with so much sacrifice. 

All this was before the memory of this generation ; but 
many of us can remember when troops paraded Boston 
streets. The court-house was guarded, pistol-shots were 
heard within the walls, the alarm-bell clanged in defence of 
law and order, when Anthony Burns, the fugitive slave, 
marched through the streets with an escort of dragoons, 



382 AN" AGE OF PKOGKESS. 

marines, guards, and artillery, while all along the line was 
heard the hiss and execration, rising and redoubling from 
street to street. Ah, well, thank God, when Abraham Lin- 
coln set his name to that immortal document, the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, slavery was doomed, and when Lee gave 
up his sword to Grant its doom was sealed. 

Much has been boastingly said about the wonderful pro- 
gress the world has made in the present century. But we 
who can look back fifty years realize the advance that has 
been made far more than the generation of to-day. 

It is a small affair to speak of, but the friction match is 
one of the most important inventions and contrivances for 
promoting the comfort of daily life. How many inventions 
contributing to our comfort we can record in the last half 
century ! — - indeed it is not too much to say that, for comfort, 
convenience, and personal advantage, more has been done, 
richer and more prolific discoveries have' been made, grander 
achievements have been realized, in the past half-century of 
our nation's lifetime, than in all the previous lifetime of the 
race since states or nations such as history makes us acquainted 
with have had their being. 

In philosophy, poetry, sculpture, painting, and architecture 
we have made but little progress. We have not advanced on 
Homer's poetry or Phidias's sculpture. The palaces of the 
Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, and other ancient nations were 
probably as luxurious, but incomparably more gorgeous and 
enduring, than our own. But in how many significant par- 
ticulars the progress of the world has been concentrated into 
the last century ! 

Printing was invented four centuries ago, and yet books 
printed fifty years after that time were as clear, perfect, and 
as beautiful specimens as many books of to-day. The sum 
total of improvement in printing is cheapness and rapidity of 



OLD-TIME PRINTING. 



383 



production. In the good old times a book was bequeathed as 
an invaluable legacy; if given to a religious house it was 
offered on the altar. When a prelate borrowed a Bible his 
cathedral gave a bond for its return. Libraries consisted of 
a few tracts and books, chained or kept in chests. 

I remember the tedious process of printing in the office 
attached to the bindery where I learned my trade. The press- 
man would wet down the paper over-night ; then in the morn- 
ing he would carefully place a 
sheet on the tympan, close the 
frisket over it, and shut them 
down upon the form of type; 
then, by a crank, he would run 
the table in under the platen, 
and pull the handle of the lever 
over by his full weight, bring- 
ing a powerful pressure on the 
tympan, producing upon the 
paper a facsimile of the type ; as 
he released his hold, the balance- 
weight raised the platen, the 
tympan and the frisket were 
raised by the pressman, the fris- 
ket was thrown up to the catch, and the paper was then taken 
off the spurs of the points ; and thus one side of a sheet was 
printed. Now, by improved presses and the wonderful art of 
stereotyping, one hundred thousand readers can be supplied 
with newspapers in four hours. 

But it is in means of light, locomotion, and communication 
that the progress in this generation contrasts with the aggre- 
gate of progress in all generations put together since the 
earliest days of authentic history. 

The lamps and torches which illuminated Belshazzar's 




NOT A CIRCULATING LIBRARY. 



384 MODERN LIGHT AND LOCOMOTION. 

feast were probably as brilliant, and perhaps formed of the 
same materials, as those which shone on the fetes of Versailles 
when Marie Antoinette presided over them, or the Tuileries 
during the magnificence of the first Napoleon ; or at the 
receptions of Washington in the Capitol of our country. Pine 
wood, oil, and perhaps wax, were the materials for light in 
the eighteenth century before Christ and in the eighteenth 
century after Christ. A hundred years ago we burned the 
same materials, and obtained about the same amount of light, 
as they did five thousand years ago. The streets of cities 
which from the days of Pharaoh till 1800 were dim and 
gloomy are now lit up with the brightness of moonlight. 
Many of us remember the oil lamps in our streets, making 
darkness visible. Now we use gas, of which each burner is 
equal to fifteen or twenty candles, and the electric light, still 
more brilliant, is introduced all over our country. We have 
the Bude light and the calcium light, with analogous inven- 
tions fifty-fold more brilliant. We remember the method of 
illumination as it was in the days of Solomon ; we see it as 
Faraday and Drummond and Edison have made it. 

The same may be said of locomotion. Nimrod and Noah 
travelled in much the same way and at about the same rate of 
speed as our fathers, — yes, as some of us did when we were 
young. When Abraham wanted to send a message to Lot, 
he despatched a man on horseback, who might gallop twelve 
miles an hour ; when 'our fathers would send a message to 
their nephews, they could do no better and go no quicker. 
When we travelled from Boston to New York, we did well to 
average eight miles an hour. I remember travelling, in 1829, 
from Albany to Utica in a canal-boat, and made three miles 
an hour ; and in 1832 I travelled from Utica to Albany by 
stage, and made six miles an hour. At that time we de- 
pended on the speed and endurance of the horses. "How 



THE PASSEXGER FOR FISHKILL. 



385 



far is it to Jefferson? " asked a man of a negro. " Well, sah, 
wid dat hoss it 's seventeen miles ; wid a good hoss it 's seven 
miles, but if you had Massa Sam's hoss, you'm dar now." 
Now we can leave Portland in the morning, breakfast in 
Boston, lunch in Springfield, dine in New York, sleep in 
Philadelphia, or go on and breakfast next morning in Rich- 
mond. I can leave New York in the morning and reach 

m Buffalo in ample time to 



lecture the same evening. 
An old story will illus- 
trate the confidence in the 
prompt arrival of trains. 
On the Hudson River 
Railroad a man contin- 
ually inquired of the con- 
ductor whether the train 
~ — ", had arrived at Fishkill. 
" No, sir, you rest content, 
I will tell you when we 
get there." At last Fish- 
kill was reached, and as 
the train started again 
the conductor came into 
Fishkill?" "Dear 




SEVENTEEN MILES " WID DAT HOSS 



me. 



the car. " Conductor, is this 

yes, I forgot you." He pulled the cord and stopped the 

train. " Now then, hurry up and get out, this is the place, 

and we are losing time." " Oh, I don't want to get out, 

but my wife told me when I got to Fishkill, I must take a 

pill." 

Everything that has been done in the line of fast travel 
since the world began has been done since we were boys. 
To be sure, greater speed has been and is constantly being 
attained by the improvement of roads. I remember the talk 



386 REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST. 

about coaches without horses, and when I was a boy I used 
to sing the following song : — 

" Oh dear, oh dear, the truth I say, 
Something new starts every day ; 
Steam for boiling, steam for baking, 
Steam for brewing and sausage-making, 
Steam to fire large balls and bullets, 
Steam to hatch out chickens and pullets, 
Oh dear, oh dear, the truth I say." 

In 1831 I rode from Albany to Schenectady on the first 
railroad built in this country, when we travelled sixteen miles 
in an hour and twenty minutes, the cars being open, some- 
thing like the summer street-cars of the present day. The 
rails were flat, spiked on timbers, and the passengers were 
constantly in danger of " snake-heads." Now in our luxurious 
palace-cars we travel from New York to Chicago, a thousand 
miles, in twenty-six hours. In 1829 I was sixty-three days in 
crossing the Atlantic, and a quick passage was thirty days ; 
in 1879 I crossed in nine days ; and now the voyage is often 
made in less than seven days. 

The progress in the means of communication is more re- 
markable than all. Washington was no better off in this 
respect than the consuls of ancient Rome, or the Pitt minis- 
try of England than Julius Csesar when he landed on the 
shores of Great Britain eighteen hundred years before. I 
remember the clumsy method of telegraphing on the martello 
towers and stone round-houses, on eminences along the coast, 
by horizontal arms worked on an upright timber, operated by 
pulleys ; signs were made from hill-top to hill-top, conveying 
information slowly and tediously from point to point. Now 
the clocks in all Great Britain can be regulated by Greenwich 
time through electricity, and Washington can communicate 
with St. Stephen's as fast as the words can be written. If 
David wished to send a word of love to Jonathan, a hundred 



A QUEER IDEA OF TELEGRAPHING. 387 

miles away, he could not have done it in less than ten hours, 
Nor could we have sent word faster fifty years ago. Now we 
send a message a thousand miles in ten seconds. At our 
breakfast tables we read in our morning papers all that oc- 
curred of importance the day before, and what the state of 
the weather was the world over. I well remember being in 
Baltimore on the day when the first message was sent from 
Washington, and how great the excitement was in the streets. 
Men readily paid one dollar to send a short message to 
Washington for the purpose of obtaining the slip of paper 
marked, at that time, with dots conveying the intelligence 
that the message had been received. Time and space would 
fail me to speak of the new and wonderful invention of the 
telephone, by which articulate sounds can be conveyed from 
Chicago to New York, one thousand miles, and the voice of 
the speaker be distinctly recognized. 

This generation can hardly conceive the astonishment 
once expressed at what are to them common things. Men 
travelled miles to see the "fire-cart." A steamboat was 
described as having a saw-mill on one side and a grist-mill on 
the other, a blacksmith's shop in the middle, and a great pot 
a-boiling all the time in the cellar. During the Mexican war, 
in a thunderstorm, the lightning ran along the wires ; a man 
cried out, " There goes the news from the seat of war." A 
man said to his wife : " Well, I don't see for my part how 
they send letters on them 'ere wires without tearing 'em all to : 
bits." " Laws me ! " his wife said, " they don't send the 
paper, only just the writin'." I must confess that the magnetic 
telegraph is to me a puzzle. Operators have often endeavored 
to explain it to me, but I may be so dull of apprehension that 
I cannot comprehend it. The very best description of it I 
ever heard was from a negro, who said to his companion : — 

" Sam, do you know what de 'lectric telegraph is ? " " No, 

24 



388 



AN OKIGINAL EXPLANATION. 



I don't know what it am." "But I can 'splain one to 
you." " Well, 'splain away, den." « S'pose dere was a dog 
with his head in New York and his tail in Pennsylvania." 
" But dere nebber was sich a dog as dat." "I said, s'pose 
dere was sich a dog." "Werry well, s'pose away den." 
"S'pose dere was a dog with his head in 
New York and his tail in Pennsylvania. 
Well, when I tread on dat dog's tail in 
Pennsylvania, he would bark 
in New York, would n't he ? 
Dat 's de 'lectric 



telegraph." 

When gas was 
first introduced, 
an old lady in 
E dinburgh 
threw up her 
hands, exclaim- 
ing, " Ah, me, 
what is to be- 
come of the puir 
whales ? " 

Scarcely any 

important invention has started at once into being, and it is 
curious to trace their progress from the inception to the final 
grand practical result. Dr. Johnson saw a lamplighter in 
Bolt Court, trying unsuccessfully to light a lamp, until there 
was a black vapor on the wick. "Ah," said the Doctor, 
" one of these days we shall see London lighted by smoke." 
A hundred and fifty years before gas was used, Dr. Clayton 
distilled coal in a retort, but could not condense the gas thus 
obtained. He amused his friends by burning gas, as it is- 
sued through holes pricked with a pin in a bladder in which 




EXPLAINING "DE 'LECTRIC TELEGRAPH 



PUFFED UP WITH PEIDE. 389 

he had confined it. The history of steam invention is famil- 
iar to all. Jonathan Hulls did actually make a model of a 
steamboat in 1736 ; it failed, and the boys sung this doggerel 
in the streets where he lived : — 

" Jonathan Hulls, 
With his paper sculls, 
Invented a machine 
To go against stream, 
But he, being an ass, 
Could not bring it to pass, 
And so was ashamed to be seen." 

Yes, there is much to excite our wonder in the giant 
strides of progress in the last fifty years, and there is a clear 
call to a real festival of hope, gladness, and rejoicing in the 
present light. But what should be our attitude in this 
steadily growing radiance? If we stand now in the flush 
and gold and hope of the morning, instead of the shifting 
light and shadow of the night, is it not the wisest course 
to take frequent observations, look close to our reckonings, 
while we are going so fast, and see just where we are? It 
requires more thought and watchfulness to cross the path of 
the lightning express than it does to cross that of a donkey- 
cart in a country lane ; and as all progress is a learning, is 
not the safe attitude of a learner to be modest, reverent, self- 
restrained, and observant? Will noise and boastfulness ap- 
prehend the glory of the growing day ? 

Do we not see men on every side making boastful con- 
gratulations that we are not as our grandsires were ? Is it not 
a common occurrence for newspaper articles on the times to 
begin with, "In these days of refinement," "In this era 
of enlightenment and civilization," "In this age of progress," 
etc.? while the nineteenth century runs up and down in 
the land, decked in its phylacteries, or, like a hen that has 
laid its virgin egg^ struts about cackling, "Look at me; 
admire me, I 'm the nineteenth century." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

DANGER SIGNALS — NOTES OF WARNING FROM EARLIER 
DAYS AND SCENES — RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST. 



Lamentable Ignorance — Thin-skinned People — How Some of Them Show 
Their Indignation — Proving a Man a Liar — Gentility is Not Always 
Respectability — Clothes Do Not Always Proclaim the Man — "A Man's 
a Man for a' That " — The Curtain Lifted — A Peep Behind the Scenes — 
Personal Recollections — My First Address in Boston — Recalling My 
Theatrical Days — Companions of My Youth — Tragic Deaths — Fate of 
Some of My Comrades — An Incident in Glasgow — A Dastardly Act — 
Terrible Consequences That Followed — Found Dead Among the Rushes — > 
My Yisit to the Indianapolis Lunatic Asylum — Raving of Devils, Snakes, 
and Creeping Things — "Oh! How They Glare at Me!" — "They 
Creep! They Crawl!" — Awful Scenes — Graphic Pen Picture of a 
Toper — The Devil's Workshop — Satan's Abode — Calling His Satellites 
Around Him — Alcohol, the Right Hand of the Devil — An Uncom- 
promising Fight. 

HAVE been surprised at the 
lamentable ignorance which 
exists with regard to the tem- 
perance enterprise among a 
class by no means ill-informed, 
men who, perhaps, on other 
subjects, have forgotten more 
than I ever knew or ever shall 
know. A friend told me he was 
asked by a gentleman if he ever drank 
coffee. " What do you mean ? " " Do 
you ever drink coffee ? " " What do you mean ? " " Why, 
you are a teetotaler, and I suppose you drink only tea." That 
was his idea of teetotalism. Other manifestations of a want of 
knowledge regarding the subject are the spiteful sneers at our 
principles, and the contempt which some men cast upon our 

390 




I DESPISE EVERYBODY.' 



391 



movement. I have often been astonished to find gentlemen 
speaking so slightingly and acting so unwisely in this matter. 
When I hear any man speak contemptuously of this movement, 
I know at once that he is ignorant concerning it. I defy any 
man of common sense to despise it after he is acquainted with 
the history of the reform from the time when a feeble barrier 
was first raised against the tide of death ; I defy him to despise 

it after he has made himself ac- 
quainted with an instrumentality 
feeble in itself, but made mighty 
by God's power to pulling down 
the strongholds of intemperance ; 
I defy him to witness the revo- 
lution now going on in society, 
and despise the means by which 
that revolution is produced. The 
temperance enterprise rises before 
him in its glory, grandeur, and 
beauty, claiming and receiving, in 
proportion to his knowledge, in- 
voluntary respect, however much 
he may be led to oppose it. 

When we speak of effects, no- 
body gets angry; but when we 
speak of the causes, we touch indi- 
viduals, for these causes cannot exist without human agency. 
I have seen some persons manifest decided wrath when they 
did not approve of some sentiment uttered at a meeting. I 
have seen a thin-skinned man button up his coat — the more 
buttons the better — and look very fiercely around him as if 
he longed to try his powers on somebody, take up his hat, and 
smash it down over his eyes till he looked like a certain mem- 
ber of Parliament when he said, " I despise everybody." I 




A THIN-SKINNED MAN. 



392 PROVING A MAN" A LIAR. 

have seen persons walk out of the hall and bang the door after 
them because something that was said offended them. Now 
that is the smallest, most cowardly method of showing resent- 
ment, that I know of. I saw a man once go out of a place of 
worship because the minister said something he did not ap- 
prove, just as if a minister was placed in the sacred desk to 
consult the tastes and opinions of his people, and ask how 
much, or how little, of the gospel he should preach. A man, if 
he has God's spirit in his heart and God's message in his hand, 
can command the respect of his people by the rules laid down 
in the gospel ; and if preaching the gospel drives men out of 
the church, let them go, for the church is better off without 
them. The strength of the church of Christ, I believe, con- 
sists not so much in its numbers, its wealth, or its popularity, 
as in its purity. 

I do not say that respectable moderate drinkers perpetuate 
the evil of drunkenness intentionally, but I say that they do 
it ; and if I should prove it, I have no doubt that some one 
would be very angry. The assertion itself will not make 
people angry ; they will say, " O, that is a man's opinion and 
nothing more ; " but if the man proves his opinions to be cor- 
rect, then is the time when offence is given. A man went to 
his neighbor and said : — 

" So-and-so called me a liar." 
" Oh, never mind that." 

" But I do mind it ; it pains me, it hurts my feelings when 
a man calls me a liar." 

" Oh, never mind, I should not mind it." 
" I say you would mind it as much as I do." 
" Oh no, think nothing of it ; you know he can't prove it." 
" Why, confound the fellow, he has proved it, and that 's 
what makes me so mad." 

Now, I do not condemn the respectable moderate drinker 



THE SOT'S INVITATION. 



393 



as purposely perpetuating drunkenness, but he does it. And 
when I say the respectable moderate drinker, it must be under- 
stood that I do not judge of a man's respectability by the qual- 
ity of his coat or the amount of his bank stock. I do not think 
a man who is what we call genteel is necessarily respectable. 
Gentility is not always respectability. A man may have a 
hand as hard as horn ; he may wear a fustian jacket, moleskin 
trousers, and hob-nailed shoes ; if he is only right in his head 
and heart he is a gentleman. I 
do not care whether he digs 
coal in the deepest mine in the 
land or pleads in the highest 
court. "A man's a man for a' 
that." It is the respectability of 
a man, morally considered, that 
I speak of when I use the term 
" respectable moderate drinker." | 

Now let me prove my point. 
Suppose some respectable young 
man, — your son, for instance, — 
while walking through the street 
should meet the worst drunkard 
in town, — one of those miserable, 
pale-faced, ghastly, hollow-eyed gin-drinkers, or one of those 
blear-eyed, bloated wretches, offensive to every sense. He 
comes up to your son, puts his hand on his shoulder, looks him 
in the face with a maudlin look, and says, " Come, I 've got a 
bottle of liquor in my pocket, and I shall be very much 
obliged to you for the privilege of taking a social glass with 

fOU." 

Now, if your son never drinks till he drinks with him, he 
will never drink at all ; if he waits to take the first glass till 
he takes it in such company, he will never take it; he will 




TEMPTATION BESISTED. 



394 



THE CURTAIN LIFTED. 



be a total abstainer as long as he lives. But if a respecta* 
ble young lady, were to ask your son to take wine, he would 
probably say, " if you please, madam," and take it in a min- 
ute. If any respectable gentleman asked him to take wine 
at his table, he might take it without a blush on his cheek. 
It is a respectable practice, maintained and supported by a 
respectable community. But if we can only make it , dis- 
reputable to use strong 
drink as a beverage, dis- 
graceful to offer it as an 
article of entertainment 
the next generation is 
saved with very little 
trouble. Saved from 
what ? Let us unroll the 
canvas, let us lift the 
curtain. 

I once belonged to a 
club of young men, which 
at one time was called 
the Shakespeare Club, 
because many of its mem- 
bers were theatrical gen- 
tlemen; and in that pro- 
fession you will find some 
splendid fellows, as the world terms them, with natural 
ability and genius. Some such there were in that club. 
I knew them well. They received me into their society, and 
out of the thirty-five or thirty-six members of that club, I was 
among the least in intellect and genius. Many years after I 
left that club, I delivered the first temperance address that 
was ever delivered in the Boston Melodeon. I said : — 

" Ladies and gentlemen, — Twelve years ago I stood in 




A DOOR TO RUIN. 



EEMINISCENCES OF MY EAELY DAYS. 



395 



this building, the last time it was opened for theatrical per- 
formances. The play then was, 4 Departed Spirits ; or, the 
Temperance Hoax,' in which some of the best and most 
glorious pioneers and leaders of this enterprise were held up 
to scorn and contempt. Where I stand was the stage ; where 
that organ stands were the scenery and machinery ; before 
me was the pit ; there is the first, and there the second row 
of boxes ; the third has been 
taken away ; there is the 
which led to one dressing 
room; and there the 
which led to another. 

" This house is 
very little changed, 
but circumstances 
are greatly changed. 
Where are the young 
men who, twelve 
years ago, associated 
with me in this 
house, — where? 
Echo only answers, 
'Where?' I knew 
them, — one a fine singer, a man who kept horses worth 
seven hundred dollars at Reed's establishment, at the back 
of the Pemberton House, used to invite us to ride, and 
many a ride I have had with him to Brighton and Brookline 
and vicinity. Where is he? Dead! Where did he die? 
He died in a horse-trough in the stable where he once kept 
his fine horses. No one was with him when he died except a 
city missionary, John Augustus. The thought that saddened 
him when dying was, 'My old friends have left me; and 
there is no one with me to wipe the cold sweat from my 




SAD FATE OF ONE OF MY COMPANIONS. 



396 COMPANIONS OF MY YOUTH. 

brow but a city missionary that I have scoffed and laughed 
at as a fanatic' He died, struggling in his wretched bed, 
cursing those who had brought him to ruin." 

"Another, a classical scholar, a college graduate, a man 
whose presence of mind in danger or difficulty exceeded that 
of any man I ever knew. He was the most intensely practical 
joker I ever saw in my life, one that nothing in the world could 
daunt, a man who always (as we say) had his wits about him. 
Where is he? Dead! Where did he die? He died in a 
drunken debauch, falling down a flight of stairs when endea- 
voring to find his way without a light in a Pittsburg hotel. 
He broke his neck, and scarce a dozen persons went to his 
funeral. ,, 

I spoke of another and another. And one of them, — I 
saw him die. He had not seen his twenty-third birthday. 
He had bitten his tongue through twice, until it grew so 
large that he could not articulate, and he spat out the bloody 
foam in his attempt to utter words. He sprang from his bed, 
dashed himself against the wall, fell back in quivering con- 
vulsions, was taken up and laid down again on the bed, and 
there he died. 

Another one said to me : " I am longing to quit this course 
of living ; I shall go to sea, and get out of temptation." He 
got drunk for the last time, as he said ; went on board a 
whaleship, and, going up aloft while under the influence of 
the shakes from his last night's spree, fell and dashed his 
brains out on the deck. 

I remember a friend said to me one morning, " Philip R. is 
dead." "No!" "Yes." "Where did he die? I was at a 
supper given by an engine company last night, and he was 
there rather how-come-you-so — . He can't be dead." " But 
he is. The watchman found him in the gutter. He started 
to walk home while intoxicated, and fell. His warm body 



A COWARDLY TRICK. 397 

melted the ice, and you know how cold the night was. He 
was found badly frozen. They took him to a house, but he 
was too far gone, and died in a few hours." 

A gentleman in Glasgow once gave me the following in 
writing. A young man, a machinist, a splendid workman* 
but a notorious drunkard, was induced to put his name to the 
pledge, and he kept that pledge for six years. He withstood 
all temptation, — the temptation at the corner of the street,, 
in the social circle, among his friends, and, what was worse 
than all, the temptation in his shop ; for I think that in many 
cases the persecution of workingmen by workingmen is ten- 
fold worse than the persecution of workingmen by their 
employers. I think that the tyrannous drinking customs of 
these shops are an abomination. There are known men in 
this country, — I have seen them and read their letters in the 
newspapers, — who are now wandering about in quest of 
work, honest, sober, industrious men, who have been driven 
from shop to shop because their companions have made each 
place too hot to hold them, in consequence of their refusal to 
bow down to the accursed drinking customs of their fellow- 
workmen. (This refers to Glasgow some years since.) That 
man withstood all these temptations. When his only sister 
was married, he went to the wedding. They knew that, if 
they asked him to drink, he would refuse; that, if they 
offered him whiskey, he would spurn it with contempt; 
indeed, they were afraid to ask him, for he had strong fists,, 
and he threatened to thrash any man that would tempt him 
to drink. In the midst of the festivities, however, tea 
was passed around, and some one wickedly and fiendishly, 
with a coward's spirit, put a quantity of whiskey in his tea. 
He drank it. He was not aware that there was in it an influ- 
ence that would operate on his system as it did ; and he never 
drew a sober breath after that. Three weeks from that day 



398 



A VISIT TO AN INSANE ASYLUM. 



he was found among the rushes by the river, staring, as only 
a dead man can stare, into the bright blue sky, the foam 
oozing from his livid lips. He knew not that he had drank 
the spirit ; but its influence was upon his physical frame, run- 
ning like fire through his blood and nerves, 
and dragging him down to drunkenness and 
death. It is a hard matter to save a drunk- 
ard, when this fearful habit is acquired. 




FOUND DEAD AMONG THE 
RUSHES. 



I remember visiting the lun- 
atic asylum in Indianapolis, 
when a minister of the gospel 
pointed out to me a young girl. 
A more beautiful girl I think I never saw, but she was rav- 
ing mad, and her hands were confined to keep her from doing 
herself injury. The minister said : — 

" That girl was a member of my church, and I believe she 
was a Christian. Her father was a drunkard. She would 
come to me and ask : c What shall I do ? What can I do ? I 
will do anything to save my father, but I am hopeless. Why, 
sir, he abuses my mother so brutally that I shall go mad. I 
will not leave her, and she will not leave my father.' One 



A TERRIBLE SPECTACLE. 399 

day that man came home raving mad with drink ; he seized 
his wife and dashed her to the floor, and with his fist began 
to beat her upturned face till his hand was bloody to the 
wrist. The girl was there. What did she do ? What could 
she do ? It was her mother whom she saw thus abused. Her 
brain reeled; she rushed into a wood-house, seized an axe, 
and struck her father with it several times ; and the doctor 
said there was not a blow but would have killed him. As 
her father fell dead, she went mad, and not a single ray of 
light has penetrated the darkness of her mind from that 
time to this." When I saw in his description a man beating 
the face of a woman whom he had sworn to love and cher- 
ish, I own I felt indignation in my heart, sending the hot 
blood to the tips of my fingers. Said I, "It served him 
right, the miserable brute; I am glad she killed him." "Stop, 
sir," said the minister, "I am sorry to hear you say that. 
That man, when sober, was a tender-hearted man, and one of 
the kindest men I ever knew. He was a noble-hearted, gen- 
erous man, ready with his means to help the distressed ; but 
when he was drunk he was a fiend." When we speak of the 
brutality of the drunkard, let us raise a voice of indignation 
and condemnation against the cause that brutalizes men more 
than any other instrumentality. Oh, it is pitiful to see the 
brutalizing influences of the drink made manifest among us ! 
See that strong man raving of devils, snakes, and creeping 
things innumerable, small and great. Mark his flushed face, 
eyes bloodshot and glaring, his tongue bitten through, his 
black lips streaked with bloody foam, struggling with all his 
might against imaginary demons, shouting, and hoarsely yell- 
ing : " Oh, how they glare on me ! Ah, I will have it out 
with you yet ! Off ! off ! I say. Ah, yes. Crawl, — crawl. 
Creep, — creep. Help! oh, help!" Then gabbling, implor- 
ing pity, a prey to horrors unutterable, hideous things glaring 



400 



OH, HORROR! DRIVE THEM AWAY!" 



at him from the walls, stretching out their long, glistening 
arms ; disgusting, slimy reptiles crawling over him in swarms. 
Turn which way he will, there they are, — on the floor, the 
walls, the ceiling, writhing under the door ; millions of them ! 
" Oh, horror ! Drive them away ! They creep, they crawl ! 
Pity, oh pity ! Help ! help ! " He suffers days and nights 
of indescribable agony and horror. This is the awful 
scourge, "Mania a potu" the 
trembling madness that the 
drunkard manufactures for his 
own torment. 

Mark me, I do not say that 
all this will come to you; that 
if you taste, you must pay this 
awful penalty. But there is 
no curse like that of appetite. 
This frightful visitation that I 
have been speaking of may 
not come to you; but it has 
come, and is coming, to many. 
What numbers are being, and 
have been, swept down by the 
hurricane of temptation ! In 
the mad fever of this passion 
they have burst the bonds of a 
mother's love, trampled a father's counsels in the dust, mocked 
at reproofs and tears and prayers; and now, with tattered 
sails, leaking hull, and splintered masts, the poor bark is drift- 
ing on, amid howling winds and wintry seas, to utter ruin, 
when it might have reached tne haven of peace and security, 
laden with honor and happiness. All this with no possible 
good to balance it. I grant you there is a stimulus in the 
liquor, and that is the reason men drink it. 




A FRIGHTFUL VISION. 



WHAT THE DRUNKARD CRAVES. 401 

There was a very amusing little picture in " Punch," a year 
or two ago, I think. A gentleman, wishing to give to his 
tenant farmers the light wines of France, provided several 
bottles of them for dinner. One man had drunk a good deal, 
and the host said to him, " Don't you think this light wine 
very good? " " Oh yes, it is very nice, but we don't seem to 
get no forrarder." Now if they do not get any forrarder 
they might as well be drinking tea, lemonade, chocolate, or 
anything else. But everybody who drinks, drinks because he 
wants to get a little forrarder. Why, this is the very princi- 
ple that is the ruin of these men. It is the gratification pro- 
duced by the drink that makes men seek it. I grant you 
there is social gratification, too. I have experienced it my- 
self, as well as observed it in other men. There is social 
gratification when men sit together and talk and chat, and 
one glass follows another till they get " altogetherish," as 
men do sometimes. Yes, there is gratification in the drink. 

That is what the drunkard craves ? Did you ever see such 
a one early in the morning ? for the drunkard is an early riser. 
He rises early that he may, in the words of Scripture, " seek 
it yet again ; " slouching along the street towards the liquor- 
shop, shivering with the cold, holding himself together, his 
eyes dull and bleared, licking his white lips with his whiter 
tongue as he longs for the stimulant. Have you ever watched 
him going up to the bar and calling for his drink ? Have 
you ever seen him take the glass of spirits in his hand ? I 
have, over and over again. He lifts it to his lips, and then, 
with a shudder sets it down again. What is the matter? All 
there is in him revolts at it. Everything there is in him 
loathes it. Is he going to drink in order to gratify his palate ? 
He loathes the spirit, yet he will have it. He grips the glass 
again. He brings it to his lips. The very smell of it so sick- 
ens him that he turns away with disgust, and he will make 



402 



WAITING FOR THE EFFECT. 



the attempt half a dozen times and fail. Give him a pickle 
or a slice of lemon or anything with a pungent taste to it ; he 
will grip that in one hand, and with all the energy he has left 
he will, with the other hand, pour the fiery draught down his 
throat, and dig his teeth 
into the lemon, or what- 
ever it may be, to enable 
him to keep the liquor 




down. Then he will 
sit quite still. Do 
not speak to him 
now. He wants to 
be perfectly quiet 
now. For what? 
He is waiting for the 
effect. That is what 
he wants, and it soon 
comes. The fiery fluid starts the stagnant blood in the ves- 
sels of his diseased stomach, and he feels better. See, his eyes 
are clearer. Instead of that pallid, pasty hue, there is a flush 
on his face, there is a little perspiration. He was burning hot 
before, but he feels better now. " Ah, I feel better. What 
a fool I was just now. I had some thought of jumping into 
the river. Let teetotalers say what they like ; a glass of 



HE GRIPS THE GLASS AGAIN. 



SATELLITES OF SATAN". 403 

spirits is the poor man's friend in the morning when he 
feels badly. I feel all right now." 

It is but a momentary experience; the Hquor fiend has 
done its work; it has started the stagnant blood. Now 
comes the reaction; the effect of the stimulus is passing. Oh, 
if he could only hold it ! It is going. It has been but a 
brief gratification. Now he has what drunkards call " dead 
liquor" in him, and that is so awful. The appetite is 
aroused. He will have more liquor now, will have it, though 
he should trample on the upturned face of his only child to 
obtain it. 

Stop him now if you can. The appetite is aroused. All 
the powers of earth — I was going to say, of heaven, — can- 
not stop him. That is the gratification the drunkard wants. 
And every moderate drinker who drinks for the stimulus 
drinks on the self-same principle, though in a lesser degree. 
These are the results we seek to prevent. 

Intoxicating liquor is deceptive in its nature, and it does 
seem to me sometimes as if Satan himself had no power on 
earth that was doing his work so effectually as this. We 
might almost fancy him seated on his high and burning 
throne in Pandemonium, crowned with a coronet of everlast- 
ing fire, calling around him his satellites and asking each to 
show his power to bring men to that awful abode and to 
enlist recruits for perdition. We may imagine Mammon, the 
meanest of all the gods, standing up and saying : " Send me. 
I can send men from their homes across the burning desert 
or the trackless ocean, to fight, and dig in the earth for yellow 
dust. I can so harden the heart that the cry of the widow 
and the fatherless shall be unheard. I can so seal up every 
avenue of human affection that the heart of my victim shall 
become as hard as the metal he loves, and in his death strug- 
gle he will clutch closer and closer to his heart the bag of 

25 



404 A HORRIBLE MONSTER. 

gold, which is the only god he ever worshipped." Belial, 
filthiest of all the gods, next proclaims his power. Then 
the Destroyer asserts his claim; he holds war, pestilence, and 
famine in his hand, and makes men, whose trade it shall 
be to deface God's image, rank themselves in hostile array, 
and hurry each other shrieking, unshrouded, into another 
world. 

Then all is silent, and we may imagine a mighty, rumbling 
sound, at which hell quakes, and far off in the distance is seen, 
borne upon the^ fiery tide, a monstrous being, — his hair a 
mass of snakes matted together with blood, his face besmeared 
with human gore. He rises half his length, and the waves 
dashing against his breast fall back in a shower of fiery spray. 
"Who art thou?' , "I am an earth-born spirit. I heard 
your proclamation and I have come. Send me. I will turn 
the hand of the father against the mother, the mother against 
the child, the husband against the wife. I will wrap in my 
cerement the young man in the pride of his manliness, and 
wither him. I will make that fair young girl such a thing 
that the vilest wretch shall shrink from her in disgust. I 
will do more. I will so deceive them that the mother shall 
know that I destroyed her first-born, and yet offer me her 
second. The father shall know that I destroyed the hope of 
his house, and yet lift the deadly draught to the lips of others. 
Governors shall know how I have sapped the roots of states > 
and yet spread over me the robe of their protection. Legis^ 
lators shall know the crime and misery I cause, but shall still 
shield and encourage me. Ministers shall know that I have 
torn the surplice from the shoulders of many who have stood 
in the holy place, and hurled them in the dust, and some of 
them shall plead for me. In heathen lands I shall be called 
fire-water, spirit of the Devil ; but in Christendom men shall 
call me ' a good creature of God.' " All hell resounds with a 



AN UNCOMPKOMISING FIGHT. 405 

shout, and Satan exclaims, " Come up hither, and take a seat 
on the throne till we hear your name." As he mounts to the 
throne, the spirit shouts aloud, " My name is Alcohol ! " And 
the name is shouted in every part of hell, and the cry is 
raised, " Go forth and the benison of the pit go with you." 
It does seem to me that no power on earth is so deceptive. 
No man, as I have already said, ever intended to become 
intemperate. Thousands are dying to-day, — the poor, 
shrieking spirits flying wildly into eternity, every one of 
which drank the first glass with no intention of becoming a 
drunkard. 

Young men, we are striving, God helping us, to go like 
divers into the depths ; for many bright and beautiful pearls 
are found hidden under the black rocks of intemperance. 
Many have been brought up that are now shining with the 
hues of the Christian graces. And though we do not affirm 
that our principle is to entirely reform and regenerate a man, 
we are waging, by this instrumentality, warfare against this 
one sin ; because, ruinous as are its effects, mentally and mor- 
ally, it is also a physical evil to be removed by physical means. 
And we shall succeed, though neither you nor I may see the 
day. I sometimes think that the grass is now in the sod 
which is to wave over my grave, but what of that ? Shall I 
not sow and plant and water and pray, though there be not a 
blade of grass in the sand to cheer my sight ? If the enter- 
prise be a righteous one, it is in God's hands. We shall work, 
toil, labor, and pray. Yes, pray. I pra}^ that, when death 
comes to me, he may come while the harness is on, while I 
am battling for the right against a hard, black-hearted in- 
iquity. We fight, sure and certain of success. Some will 
say, " Do you really believe that intemperance will ever dis- 
appear?" Yes. His will is to be "done in earth as it is in 
heaven," and I know when His will shall be done on earth, 



406 DO WHAT YOU CAN. 

there will not be a dram-shop, nor a drunkard on the face 
of the whole earth. Oh, young man, is there nothing attrac- 
tive in this enterprise ? You say, " If I wanted to serve you, 
there is not much I can do." Do what you can. It was said 
of old in approval of one, " She hath done what she could." 
You remember reading that Andrew followed our Saviour ; 
but you do not read that he made Yexy great speeches, or 
preached many eloquent sermons, or that he gathered the 
people about him in a multitude ; but you read that Andrew 
went and called Peter, and Peter stood up, and three thous- 
and were converted in one day. You have influence to save 
some poor soul, to bring him up from the depths. You may 
be instrumental in setting up some great reformer. And the* 
blessing of God and the people will rest upon you. 



CHAPTER XX. 

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? — LIFE IN THE BACK STREETS OP 
NEW YORE: — VOICES FROM THE SLUMS. 

Fast Young Men — Seeing a Little of Life — A Sea Captain's Story — Effects 
of One Glass of Grog — A Young Man's Story — A Son's Hand Stained 
with Blood ! — "Out, Damned Spot " — What is a True Gentleman ? — A 
Letter-Carrier's Story — Calling Her Neighbor a "Hindewidual " — "I 
Ups with a Pail of Water," etc. — Leaders of Society — Women Who Fol- 
low Them — John Pounds, the Portsmouth Cobbler — Noble Women — 
Clara Barton's Self-sacrifice and Heroism — The Iron Cross of Germany — 
The "Old Brewery" in New York — Murderer's Alley — What a Police- 
man Told Me — A Dreadful Locality — Human Fiends — Stripping a 
Corpse and Selling the Grave Clothes — Raising the Money to Buy the 
Place— A Memorable Meeting in Old Tripler Hall — A Street Scene in 
New York — Little Mary Morrison. 




VERY young man has ambi- 
tion. There is no young man 
who does not intend to make 
his position next year higher 
than it is this year. You are 
looking forward to something 
better. You desire to be 
manly. What is it to be be manly, 
brave, to be noble ? There is 
class of young men who think that 
manly is to swear, swagger, and 
trample on the decencies of human life, to smoke, drink, gam- 
ble, and drive a fast horse. They consider it manly to toss off 
their glass " like a man," and swear " like a man." Are these 
manly young men? We call them "fast young men." Now 
there is not in this world a more contemptible set of men than 

407 



408 SEEING A LITTLE OF LIEE. 

" fast young men." It requires neither genius, education, nor 
intellect, to drink, smoke, swear, or drive a fast horse. Give 
the materials to the biggest lunatic in an insane asylum, and 
he will do all these things as well as the best "fast young 
man " you have. We are brave — when ? We are brave when 
we overcome that which threatens to overwhelm us. Young 
men, we are heroes when we are able to chain some cherished 
desire, and to say to some powerful passion, "Be still! I am 
your master." To be bold against an enemy is common to 
the brute. Man's prerogative is to be bold against himself, to 
conquer his own lusts and wicked ambitions and fancies in the 
sacred name of God. That is to be noble, that is to be brave 
and manly. 

The excuses young men give for entering into dissipation 
are various ; but they are usually summed up in this, — that 
they "must see a little of life." Why, my young friend, has 
not God spread out before you, in His magnificent bound- 
lessness of wealth, everything that can satisfy your noblest 
nature ? You want to see life ; you desire to indulge in for- 
bidden " luxuries," presuming that you can " touch pitch and 
not be defiled." 

Young men begin to use intoxicating liquors with no in- 
tention, desire, or expectation of being injured by them. The 
moderate drinker supposes that, because he does not get in- 
toxicated, drink is doing him no harm. 

A captain of a vessel trading between Liverpool and New 
York spoke to me as follows : " Mr. Gough, I never was in- 
toxicated in my life, never; and yet I have mourned and 
repented over years of excess." " I don't understand you." 
" I repeat, I never was drunk in my life ; and yet I have 
mourned over years of excess." " Well, how do you explain 
that?" "I think I can. When at sea I always took a 
glass of grog after my dinner, that was all. I used to mix it 



A SEA CAPTAIN'S PEIDE. 409 

pretty stiff ; and I liked it. It seemed to do me good. After 
taking it I would come on deck and be a little sociable with 
my passengers, and a little more agreeable with my officers ; 
and then I would walk the deck. None but those who have 
commanded a noble clipper can have any idea of the conscious- 
ness of power a man feels as he walks the quarter-deck. 
He knows C I am master here.' Often when I have come on 
deck when a heavy gale was blowing and a pretty rough 
sea rolling, I 'd say to myself, ' This is grand ! She works 
like a beauty ! This is magnificent ! How she dips into it ! 
I have always had the ambition to make the fastest pas- 
sage on record ; perhaps I shall some day. There 's a pretty 
good gale of wind, and we are making good headway; I 
think she might bear a little more canvas.' Then I would 
order the mate to send the men aloft to shake the reefs out 
of the foretopsail. The mate would stand and look as the 
men ascended the ratlines, and he would put his hand upon 
the stanchions and gaze up as the vessel felt the press of sail. 
The mast would bend, and the vessel's head would dive 
almost under water, and I would still walk the deck, say- 
ing, ' This is grand ! I shall make the fastest passage yet. 
She works gloriously. Ah ! that 's a header for her ; how 
she dives into it ! ' Presently the influence of the grog 
would pass away, and then I would look up aloft and see 
how every rope was strained, and would perhaps turn to the 
mate and say, ' It 's getting rather dirty weather to the wind- 
ward; we shall have a nasty night. Send the men aloft, 
and close-reef the foretopsail, and make everything snug 
for the night.' Under the influence of one glass of grog 
I would spread sail enough to drive the bows of the vessel 
under the water; and when the influence of the grog 
passed away I would prudently take in sail and make things 
safe ! 



410 A SOLDIER'S MISFORTUNE. 

" Now," said he, " I believe that many a good ship, with 
passengers, cargo, and crew has foundered at sea through 
the influence of one glass of grog on the brain of her 
captain." 

Now, sitting at home in safety, you may call that modera- 
tion, but on board that ship you would not ; you would call 

it DRINKING TO EXCESS. 

A most unfortunate circumstance occurred when I was in 
Halifax, Nova Scotia. A sergeant of a regiment in the cita- 
del, who was within six months of his discharge, and who 
would have been* entitled to a good-conduct pension, got 
drunk, and drew a weapon upon a superior officer. In 
view of his previous excellent conduct, the court-martial 
so far remitted his sentence that he was only degraded 
to the ranks and put into the kitchen as one of the cooks. 
Four days after that sentence was pronounced, he hung 
himself. He told one of his comrades he knew noth- 
ing of what he did after he had taken his first glass. 
Now, moderate drinkers, or those who call themselves so, 

BEWARE ! 

One other fact, — and I deal in facts. A young man said 
to me, " Mr. Gough, I never was intoxicated, or anything like 
it, but once in my life, — never ; and on the occasion to which I 
refer I was not so far intoxicated but that I knew everything 
that occurred. I had been with some young companions, and 
after reaching home I ascended the stairs whistling. As I 
went up towards the top of the house — my room being at the 
very top — I saw the open door of a room occupied by a ser- 
vant-girl. I went in. I never should have gone if I had not 
been drinking. I was not just right. The girl screamed. 
My mother came up, and said, ' George, my son, I am ashamed 
of you.' I just shut my fist and struck my mother a terrific 
blow in the mouth. This hand was stained with my mothers 



TRUE GENTLEMEN. 



411 



blood! And now, sir, looking at that hand, I say sometimes, 
as Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth say, ' Out, damned spot ! ' 
And I would willingly have that hand cut off at the wrist 
if I could only forget that blow given while under the influ- 
ence of liquor, — the first and the last time I was ever 
intoxicated." 

Our appeal is to young men. We want you to be manly. 

There is nothing that 
dissipates manliness 
like the drink. We 
want you to be men % 
to be noble men, to be 
free from every debas- 
ing habit, to be gen- 
tlemen. What is a 
gentleman ? A true 
gentleman is noble, 
truthful, chivalrous, 
pure in speech and in 
life. A true gentle- 
man inspires the fear 
of all bad men; he is 
admired by all good 
In the presence of a true gentleman none dare say a 
mean, low, ribald, or contemptible thing. Brave men love a 
true gentleman, feeling themselves nerved to do their duty 
better. Cowards slip away from his presence like bats and 
owls before the sunlight. Be a gentleman ! High birth does 
not constitute a gentleman. A man may have a pedigree as 
long as that of the Scotchman who, when engaged in a dis- 
pute about his long line of ancestors, boasted, "The Mac- 
phersons were in the ark with Noah ! " " Hoot toot, mon ! " 
replied the other fellow, "the Cam'ells had a boat o' 




A HAND STAINED WITH BLOOD. 



men. 



412 A TENDER-HEARTED LETTER CARRIER. 

their ain ! " I say a man may have a pedigree as long as 
either of these disputants, and yet be mean and worth- 
less. 

Family lineage cannot perpetuate gentlemen. There are 
many families who are very much like a hill of potatoes ; the 
best of them are underground. Wealth cannot perpetuate 
gentlemen. A man may possess millions, and yet be a 
wretched, miserly, contemptible screw, and no gentleman; 
while another, who may have battled for his daily bread 
from infancy to old age, may possess the elements which 
constitute the true gentleman. Many who have labored among 
the poor and the lowly, among those whom the world terms 
"outcasts," have discovered germs of the finest sensibility, 
of the highest nobility of character, and manliest heroism 
among them. 

A letter-carrier said to a gentleman, who related the 
incident to me : " Ah, sir, we letter-carriers are n't always the 
most welcome people. I have carried a letter to a door, and 
have seen the lady, when she came to take it, shiver and 
turn white on receiving the black-edged envelope; and at 
such a time as that, sir, I always takes off my hat. She don't 
see it, and it don't do her no good, but somehow or other I 
always feel a little better for just lifting my hat on such an 
occasion as that." That is one of the elements that consti- 
tute a true gentleman. 

But there is a class of persons to whom indifference is the 
test of high breeding. According to their idea, if you educate 
a man to the insensibility of a post, you make him a perfect 
gentleman ; if you cultivate the heart out of a young woman, 
and make her seemingly as pulseless as a turnip, she is the lady 
to perfection. Some people have strange ideas of what con- 
stitutes a lady or a gentleman. A woman was brought before 
a police court one day, and said : " Me and another lady was 



SOCIAL SETS AND CIRCLES. 



413 



a-having a few words, and she called me a 4 hindewidual,' a,nd 
I ups with a pail of water and chncked it all over her ; and 
that began the row." Me and another lady ! The following 
notice was once pnt up over a show : " No lady or gentleman 
admitted to this exhibition in a state of intoxication" Once 
when I was in St. Louis I saw a handbill on the wall : " One 
hundred rats to be killed by one 
dog in ten minutes. None but gen- 
tlemen are expected to be present 
on the occasion." 

Now we appeal to the respecta- 
bility, the Christianity that is not 
with us in this temperance move- 
ment. Why do we ask you to 
give up that which is to you, ac- 
cording to your idea of it, an inno- 
cent gratification? On what 
ground do we ask you? I will 
tell you. "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
with all thy mind, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy 
strength ; " and the second commandment is like unto it, 

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "On these two" 

not on the one or the other — « hang all the law and the 
prophets." Now, it is for the sake of your neighbors that 
we ask you to abstain. Well, " Who is my neighbor ? " 

There are some persons who have no neighbors out of 
their visiting circle. Some seek for their neighbors on the 
church books, and they have no others. The fact is, we are 
divided into sets and circles, and the difficulty is to penetrate 
these sets and circles. We move in that circle and revolve 
in this circle, and we have nothing to do with any other 




HINDEWIDUAL.' 



414 A CELEBEATED COBBLER. 

circle. And each circle has its leader ; Mrs. Harris leads this, 
Mrs. Smith leads that, Mrs. What 's-her-name leads another, 
and the Hon. Mrs. Thingamy leads another. The members 
of these circles revolve around their leaders. They have no 
minds of their own, only such as their leaders permit them to 
have. They have no will of their own, but are entirely sub- 
servient to the will of their leaders. They are very much 
like the toys children play with. You have often seen them. 
They are pasteboard men, and when a string is pulled they 
are set in motion this way and that way ; and so Mrs. Harris 
pulls her string this way, and her circle responds; Mrs. Smith 
pulls her string that way ; Mrs. What 's-her-name pulls her 
string the other way ; and so it goes on, each circle respond- 
ing to the will of its leader. And these people call them- 
selves independent thinkers ! Why, if there is a contribution 
or subscription required for any person or cause whatever, 
those who solicit aid do not come to you. You are of no 
consequence whatever. It is the leader of your circle to 
whom they appeal first, and having obtained her subscription, 
then they come to you. You do not ask, " What is this 
money for ? " It may be for flannel waistcoats for the Hot- 
tentots, or pocket-handkerchiefs for a lot of Kaffirs, for all 
that you know about it. You say, " Is Mrs. Harris's name 
down ? " " Yes." " Then I will put my name down." And 
you have done your duty after the fashion of the gospel 
according to Mrs. Harris. 

Now, who is my neighbor ? Who are the grandest men 
and women the world has ever seen? Those who have 
sought for their neighbors outside of their own circle of 
society. The cobbler at Portsmouth, England, found his 
neighbors on the wharf, — wretched, ragged, homeless chil- 
dren. He coaxed them with roasted potatoes to come into 
his shop, that he might teach them spelling, reading, how to 



RECORD OF A NOBLE LIFE. 415 

mend their clothes, and how to cook their food; and to-day 
the greatest peer of England is not ashamed to preside at the 
anniversary meeting of one of these ragged schools at the 
East End of London. Yes, in Portsmouth they erected a 
monument to the memory, and kept the birthday, of poor 
John Pounds, tlie Portsmouth cobbler. 

Florence Nightingale searched for her neighbors amongst 
the bruised and battered soldiers of the Crimea ; Mary 
Carpenter found her neighbors among the city arabs ; Mrs. 
Wightman found her neighbors among the drunkards of 
Butchers' Row, Shrewsbury ; Mrs. Bayly found her neighbors 
among the denizens of the Kensington potteries ; Sarah Pellat 
found her neighbors among the Californian gold-diggers ; 
Miss Dix found her neighbors in the asylums for the insane. 

I have held in my hand that which few Americans have 
held in theirs, the Iron Cross of Germany. As I held it, that 
little black cross on its silver bed, I remembered that money 
could not purchase it, birth could not procure it. It can be 
obtained only in reward for the very highest order of heroic 
service. Then I held in my hand The Golden Cross of 
Remembrance. Then I held in my hand The Red Cross of 
Geneva. Who owned them? A feeble woman who has 
often sat at my own table. The Emperor of Germany gave 
her the Iron Cross of Germany. The Court of Germany gave 
her the Golden Cross of Remembrance. The Grand Duchess 
of Baden placed upon her breast, with her own hands, the 
Red Cross of Geneva. Why ? During our war she devoted 
her life to the care of sick and suffering soldiers. In later 
years, when she heard of the Franco-German war, she started 
at once for the field, supported by her own private means. 
It is reported (and I suppose it is true — although when you 
i^peak of royalty you ought to be sure, and accordingly say 
that it is reported) that the Queen, her gracious Majesty, 



416 THE "OLD BREWERY." 

sent to America, through one of her officials, for the Reports 
of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions for the use of her 
daughter, the Crown Princess of Germany. In those Reports 
was found this lady's name. "Telegraph!" And all I know 
is that she was telegraphed for, and that she could not be 
found in America. Where did they find her ? She had al- 
ready joined the German army. She had gone right through 
the lines. Along with the first eighteen officers, she climbed 
the abatis and entered the city of Strasburg, to bind up the 
wounds of the women and children who had been torn and 
shattered by shot and shell. There she worked with the 
Crown Princess and the Grand Duchess, establishing sewing- 
circles, and directing women who were employed in making 
garments. When I was in Strasburg I took particular occa- 
sion to inquire if the citizens remembered her. Oh yes, they 
remembered her well. When her work was done there, she 
took ten thousand garments and went to Paris ; she waited 
outside the walls till the Commune fell, and then she went in 
to clothe the naked and succor those who were in distress and 
need. America should consider it a high privilege to honor 
her heroine, Clara Barton. 

Ah, these are God's heroes and heroines — they who seek 
for their neighbors outside of their own circle of society. 
When young men understand this matter, then they will 
work. I will give you another fact. 

There was a meeting held in New York city for the pur- 
pose of raising funds — for what ? But few of you, perhaps, 
remember what the "Old Brewery" was, in New York. 
Dickens, in his "American Notes," has given, I believe, a 
description of it. It was one of the most dangerous places in 
the city. Moral and social reformers could do nothing there, 
nothing at all. There was a narrow passage running between 
this Old Brewery and some broken-down buildings, called 



A MEMORABLE MEETING. 419 

"Murderer's Alley;" and policemen would go up that alley 
well armed and always on the alert. One of the members of 
the police force said to me, " There have been known to take 
place here, in one house, twenty-two deaths in one month, 
without a funeral. Every corpse was taken to the hospital, 
sold, and the proceeds spent in dissipation. We tried all we 
could to break up the gang. No, we could not do it. Ladies 
helped us; young men helped us; but nothing could be 
done. So we thought we would find out when there was a 
corpse in any of the rooms, and whenever we found there 
was one, we would go in and decently shroud it ; and, sir, in 
more than one instance, before we could get out of the house, 
the grave-clothes have been torn from the corpse, and we 
have seen people at the corner of the street selling those 
shrouds as old rags, at four cents a pound, for the purpose of 
procuring whiskey. We could do nothing with the human 
fiends in that place. Well, the ladies undertook the matter 
— God bless the ladies! When they undertake to do any- 
thing, they generally do it. 

"When she will, she will, you may depend on't, 
And when she won't, she won't, and there 's an end on't." 

I do not mean that women are proverbially obstinate, but 
they are proverbially persevering. The ladies made up their 
minds that, as they could not reform the place, they would de- 
stroy it. They said, " We will destroy the place. We will 
buy it ; and then we will pull it down, and build a Mission 
House on its site." 

To raise the money we held a meeting in old Tripler 
Hall. It held an audience of about three thousand. Mr. 
Havemeyer, then mayor of the city, presided. Dr. Theodore 
Cuyler made a speech. Horace Greeley made a speech. I 
was to speak at the close. The speeches were rather long, 



420 LITTLE MARY MORRISON. 

and I was very much interested in some seventy or eighty 
children who were ranged on the platform to sing. I particu- 
larly noticed one little creature, a very pretty child. Perhaps 
if she had not been nice-looking I should not have called her 
to my side, for we are always attracted by beauty everywhere, 
and it is right we should be. I called this pretty little girl 
to my side, and said : — 

"What is your name?" 

"My name is Mary Morrison." 

" I used to know a song about little Mary Morrison." 

"Did you?" 

" Yes. Now," I said, " I want to talk to you a little while ; 
but we must not talk loud, because the gentlemen are speaking. 
So your name is Mary Morrison ? " 

" Yes. Do you see that woman down there in the crowd 
with a black bonnet on ? " 

"There are ever so many ladies there with black bon- 
nets on." 

" I don't mean a lady ; I mean my mother. My mother 's 
down there in that crowd. My mother used to get drunk, 
.ind used to whip me, and she used to turn me out of doors ; 
and my mother used to be took to the police office, and I used 
to run in the streets. But my mother goes to the Mission 
Church now, and I go to the Mission School; and I have 
learned to read " — and she became so excited that she began 
to stammer ; and she began talking so loud that I had to say, 
" Hush," to the little thing. " I know ever so many little 
hymns, — nice hymns, — and I . sing them. And I 've got 
some mottoes, — did you ever see any mottoes ? — red and 
green and yellow and blue. My mother is going to have one 
of my mottoes framed and hung up. And I have got a little 
medal with some blue ribbon to it. One of the other girls 
had yellow, and some one else had green, and another had 



A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK. 421 

red, and I had blue. And I have got the little medal in a 
box. Did you ever see those pretty little boxes the jewellers 
have, with pink cotton in them ? Well, I have wrapped my 
little medal up in the pink cotton, and put it in the little 
box. And there 's my mother looking at me now," said she, 
pointing down. " How do you do, mother? " I said, "Hush, 
my dear child." 

The little girl went to her seat, and it was my turn to 
speak. All I could say was this : " Ladies and gentlemen, 
some six weeks ago I passed through the Five Points, near 
the Old Brewery. I saw what appeared to be a bundle of 
rags lying on the curbstone. A man came up, and with his 
foot brutally kicked it, and the white arm of a woman lay 
exposed out of the bundle of rags. Another man pushed the 
bundle with a stick, pushed the stick between the wretched 
bonnet and the head, ripped off the bonnet, and threw it into 
the middle of the road, and the long hair of a woman, not 
twenty years old, streamed out into the gutter. Some police- 
men came up with a stretcher, and carried the wretched woman 
away. " Mary Morrison, come here. Come here, Mary.'* So 
I brought the little creature forward. She put her finger on 
her lip, and looked timidly at the audience. I said, " Look at 
this child ; what is it worth to save a child like that from such 
a fate as I have described? " The Mayor said, " I will give a 
hundred dollars." And another, " I will give a hundred dol- 
lars." And another, " I '11 give fifty." A gentleman said, 
" If you are going to contribute like that, we will take sub- 
scriptions now ; " and several thousand dollars were subscribed 
at once. The money was raised, the Brewery was bought, 
and the Mission House stands there to-day. That was be- 
cause those in that meeting felt the responsibility resting upon 
them of regarding their neighbor as they would regard them- 
selves, and seeking to lift up the fallen. 

26 



422 A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE. 

What we want is your aid, your influence, your co-opera- 
tion in this great work. And it is a great work. It is a 
work that is to be successful by and by. Patience ! I am not 
one of those who believe the bell is being cast that will toll 
out the death-knell of intemperance in a few years from now. 
Oh no ! It is a hard fight and a long fight, a strong fight and 
a vigorous fight ; but there is victory at the end ; that is 
sure ! I may not see it. The children we are training may 
not see it. But it will come. By and by the heroes who have 
labored shall come up over a thousand battle-fields, waving 
with bright grain that shall never be crushed in the accursed 
distillery. By and by they shall come up through vineyards, 
under trellised vines of grapes hanging in all their purple 
glory, never to be pressed into that which can debase human- 
ity. By and by they shall come to the last fire in the last dis- 
tillery, and put it out. By and by they shall come to the last 
stream of liquid death, and seal it up forever. By and by 
they shall come to the last drunkard's wife, and wipe her tears 
away. There shall be victory by and by. They shall come 
to the last neglected child, and lift him up to stand where God 
meant he should stand. By and by they shall come to the last 
drunkard, and nerve him to burst his burning fetters and make 
a glorious accompaniment to the song of freedom by the clank- 
ing of his broken chains. By and by the triumph of this and 
of ad great moral enterprises shall usher in the day of the final 
triumph of the cross of Christ. I believe it, and for that I 
work. And when I die, I pray God I may die in the harness, 
battling for this, with the hope that there is a better day com- 
ing, and a prayer, " God speed the right ! " — ever praying, 
ever working, till victory shall perch upon our banner. 
Then we will lay our laurels at His feet, and cast our crowns 
before Him, joining in the mighty anthem of praise to Him 
who hath subdued all things unto Himself. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

WILL IT PAY? — LIFE'S OPPORTUNITIES — GROTESQUE SCENES 
AND AMUSING STORIES — ON THE BRINK. 

Men Who Cannot Understand a Joke— " The Little Chap That Told Me To 
Holler ' ' — First-class Stupidity — ' ' Comfortably ' ' Full — The Stingy 
Drinker — Drink's Direful Work — Breaking a Mother's Heart — Scenes 
in a Lunatic Asylum — Raving Idiots — A Tipsy Lover — A Visit to the 
Pig-sty — An Unlooked-for Catastrophe — Another Pig in the Pen — " I 
Am as Good as Any of You" — Fighting the Pump — An Unceremonious 
Tip-over — The Tipsy Students — Decidedly Muddled — Kicking Each 
Other Out of Bed — A Grotesque Scene — The Indian and His Fire- 
water— " Only This Once" — A Clergyman's Downfall — A Wife's 
Story — In Jail — Reminiscences of Forty Years Ago — An Appeal to 
Young Men — Coach-Driving in California — A Death-bed Scene— "I 
Can't Find the Brake " — Sowing Wild Oats. 




T depends a great deal more 
upon the temperament than 
upon the strength of mind 
or intellect, whether, if you 
follow the drinking customs 
of society, you become intem- 
perate. Who are the men 
most liable to become drunkards ? I 
bring before you, for illustration, three 
men of the same class in society, as 
much alike as it is possible for three 
persons to be who are possessed of different temperaments. 
The first, cold and phlegmatic, is little affected by aught 
surrounding him. He never laughs at anything. A joke 
must be explained for him before he can understand it. If 
you should tell him you could not drive a joke into him with 

423 



424 



THEEE CHEERS FOR MR. HENRY.' 



a sledge-hammer, he would ask, Do people ever drive jokes 
into other people with sledge-hammers ? If he does not un- 
derstand a joke, he will often perpetrate one on himself, like 
the man who was very angry because some one set fire to a 
barn and burnt up two cows. "Any man," he said, "who 
would set fire to a barn 
and burn up two cows 
ought to be kicked to 
death by a jackass — and I 4- 
ahould like to do it" If 
you tell him a funny story, 
his remarks are as funny 
as the story itself. I once 
told a man of this kind 
one of the best stories I 
ever heard in my life. It 
was in connection with a 
political meeting. One 
man in the crowd kept 
shouting, " Henry ! Hen- 
ry ! Make way for Mr. 
Henry ! Mr. Henry is 
called for ! " Every sub- 
sequent speaker only made 
this man shout all the loud- 
er, " Henry ! Mr. Henry is 
called for! Three cheers for Mr. Henry! Mr. Henry is 
wanted ! " A little man, amidst these calls, was introduced 
to the platform, but still there were cries of " Henry ! Mr. 
Henry is wanted ! " and so on. At length the chairman said, 
" I wish that gentleman would keep still. It is Mr. Henry 
who is now addressing the audience." " Henry ! " said the 
man, " that ain't Henry ! That 's the little chap that told me 




THE LITTLE CHAP THAT TOLD ME TO 
HOLLER." 



THE MAN WHO COULDN'T SEE A JOKE. 425 

to holler." I thought my friend would be amused, but instead 
of that he asked, " What did he tell him to holler for ? " 
And that to me was more funny than the story itself. 

Such persons can never repeat a joke correctly. A friend 
told me that he knew a gentleman who never could under- 
stand a joke, and one of his friends was constantly perpetrating 
jokes on him. One day he said, " You are always joking me ; 
now, the next time yoa joke, just wink, so that I may know 
whether it is or is not a joke." One day he was lying help- 
less with rheumatism, when his friend called, and said, " Sorry 
to see you in the stationary line," and winked. So the poor 
fellow pondered on the remark, trying to discover the joke. 
Another friend called, and the invalid said, " See here, so-and-so 
has perpetrated a joke on me; I know he has, because he 
winked. You see I was ill in bed, and he said he was sorry 
to see me keeping a book-store. What was the joke? " 

If such a man should meet you, after a separation of years, 
he would not rush forward and take you by the hand, giving 
a hearty shake, nor slap you on the back, with " Holloa, old 
fellow ! " but he presents the tips of his fingers, and if by 
chance he gets his whole hand in yours, it comes with a flap, 
reminding you of a dead fish. These phlegmatic people are 
naturally conservative ; they are driven by public sentiment. 
Some of them continue the same from year to year. They 
are like barrel-organs ; turn the crank and you get the same 
tunes till the whole list is played off, when you may begin 
again and get exactly the same music ; if you go faster, there 
is a quicker measure ; all depends on the turning of the crank. 
They will never become drunkards, for they are moderate in 
everything. Give such a man a glass of liquor, what is the 
effect ? He is " comfortable." Give him another, he is " com- 
fortable and warm," and he thinks it has done him good ; an- 
other, and he is " com-fort-a-bler." By and by his lower lip 



426 



CLOSE-FISTED MEN AND STINGY DEINKERS. 



will drop over his chin, his chin will rest on his chest, he will 
fold his arms and fall " com-fa-blur-r-r " to sleep. He will 
wake up and take another glass, and you cannot get him 
beyond the point of " comfortable " if you fill him up. Now, 
such a man can go on drinking to the day of his death, 
doing business keenly day in and day 
out, week in, week out; and you try to 
beat him in a trade if you can ! He 
grows fat and puffy and red. The physi- 
cians tell us that such men are destroying 
their vital organs, but that we have nothing 
to do with just now. There are men com- 
fortably full every day in the year and 
yet never drunk. 

Then there is the stingy, close-fisted 
man, whose entire philosophy lies within 
the precincts of the multiplication-table 
He never has an article of clothing that 
fits him ; for when he wants a coat, or a hat, 
or any other article of clothing, he fre- 
quents the ready-made shops and buys the 
largest garment he can get for the money, 
that he may have a big pennyworth. He 
his money's worth may be able to drink any given quantity, 
but seldom gets drunk, for his tempera- 
ment prevents his parting with his money ; his love of that is 
stronger than any love of the drink can be in him. 

The third is the young man full of fire and poetry and 
music, of a nervous temperament, easily excited, fond of 
society, the life of the company, the admiration of his com- 
panions. He can sing a song, and sing it well ; tell a good 
story, and his eye flashes as he makes the point to it. He 
will become a drunkard more readily than the two others. 




BLIGHTED HOPES. 427 

When he drinks, he enters the outer circle of the whirl- 
pool; round and round he wheels, swifter and swifter, 
narrower and narrower, until, at length, he is drawn into the 
awful vortex. 

It is often remarked that there is a famine of great men in 
our day. What is one of the causes? They are cut down 
in their youth by drunkenness in thousands. Behold that 
youth at college, the leader of his class, the pride of his tutor, 
the joy of his parents, the one likely to become the ornament 
of his age. Strong drink has taken hold of him and done its 
direful work, administered at first, it may be, by the hand of 
friendship and of kindness. Awfully fatal and mistaken are 
all such expressions of friendship and of kindness. We ask 
that mother what has become of her boy. Behold her bowed 
down with grief, her countenance the picture of disappointed 
expectation ; your question receives no answer but a vacant 
look of despair ; her heart is broken. You ask his sister for 
tidings of that brother whom she loved with all a sister's 
affection, and the answer is a convulsive sob. You turn 
to the old man, his father, who looked upon him once with 
a father's pride ; with lips compressed, and with clenched 
hand as if he would send his nails through his flesh, 
the gray-haired sire turns away, and you receive no. 
answer. At last, your inquiry is made of a fellow-student. 
" Noble-hearted fellow, sir, first in his class, the soul of the 
company, the admired of his class-mates. But — the fact is 
— he took to drink, and now no one knows anything about 
him." That's the fate, often, of thousands of young men 
who might have been among the greatest men of their day. 

Ah, you say, but these men are not noble, they are utterly 
destitute of pride, ambition, or even natural affection ; they 
are simply brutal. Can you find a young man who has no 
respect or love for a good mother? When I hear a man 



428 DEGRADED TO THE LEVEL OF THE BEASTS. 

speak contemptuously of his mother I know that either he is 
a bad man, or his mother was a bad woman. It is impos- 
sible to speak otherwise than lovingly and with respect of a 
good mother. Let me say one word that will insult your 
mother, bring tears to her eyes, or make her cheeks burn 
with indignation — you will knock me down. Serve me 
right ! Let me hurt her in person or in feeling, you would 
trample on me as if I were a rat. And yet many a young 
man is steadily, deliberately, and wilfully breaking his 
mother's heart. " Oh no, no, no ! that is all wrong," you 
say, "a young man wilfully does it? " There is not a young 
man who is breaking the heart of his mother but he knows 
it; he knows that her face grows paler, the furrows grow 
deeper, and her hair grows whiter. He knows it, and yet 
he will go on, though he is conscious that she lies awake at 
night and wets her pillow with tears, weeping over his way- 
ward life. 

Therefore we hate the drink because of its power to 
paralyze every noble ambition, dry up every fountain of 
affection, and debase and degrade the manhood of its victims. 

What does a man do when he gets drunk ? He brings 
himself to the level of the slavering idiot, or the gibbering, 
raving madman. Go into a lunatic asylum, and see that 
man picking an imaginary thing from his coat sleeve; 
another listlessly gazing on nothing; another uttering "the 
loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind " ; or yet another 
raving in his madness ; how sad such sights ! If you are 
grateful to God for the possession of reason, your thanks- 
giving, night and morning, would be, " Father, I thank thee 
that thou hast made me a man, and crowned me with the 
noble faculty of reason and continued that great blessing till 
now." To the mere animal there is no beauty in the setting 
sun, there is no loveliness in the flower, no glory in the land- 



A TERRIBLE TRANSFORMATION. 429 

scape, no splendor in the starry heavens, no sublimity in the 
thunder's peal and the lightning's flash ; the animal raises its 
dull, meaningless eyes, and gazes on all the beauties and 
grandeur of nature unmoved. Not so with man. He views 
the glowing landscape, the setting sun, or lifts his eyes to the 
heavens, beholding the star-studded sky, and sees and feels 
the beauty and the glory of the scene. The sense of beauty 
is in his soul, and to him all creation is beautiful. 

When the mother speaks of her babe, does she waste her 
eloquence in descanting on his ruby lips, his pearly teeth, his 
blooming, dimpled cheek, his rounded forehead? No, 'tis 
what he knows, what he observes, how he imitates ; it is the 
budding of his mind. The external beauties might all be 
there, and yet how would that mother feel were the beautiful 
infant that slumbers sweetly in its cradle an idiot ? It is in 
the gem the value lies, not in the beauty of the casket. That 
beauty but becomes the more terrible when the shrine is that 
in which there is nothing. God has a right to take from you 
reason, and becloud your mind, and send you forth a raving, 
slavering, silly thing ; he has a right to lay his hand upon you 
and wither your intellect. But will anyone say, " I have a 
right, when I please, by the use of intoxicating drink, to 
dethrone my reason, and transform myself into a drivelling 
idiot?" What if God should say, "Let him alone, let him 
stagger on, through the rest of his life, what he has chosen to 
make himself by one simple act of intoxication." What if he 
should thus make you always what you have once made your- 
self ? Can you imagine a more horrible fate to come upon 
you than that ? It is sometimes said, " That man is as drunk 
as a beast." Such language is a libel on the brutes. Man is 
the only animal that thus degrades himself. No brute beast 
will step down from the position in which its Maker placed it, 
and every man who gets drunk does just that. 



430 



AX UNWELCOME INTRUDER. 



Think how contemptibly silly some men make themselves 
when intoxicated, by placing themselves in positions they are 
ashamed of when sober. I heard of one of these young men 
who never would " sign away his liberty," who was paying 
particular attentions to a young lady. Occasionally he would 

call to see her when he was parti- 
^\- -o ally intoxicated; but when so far 

gone that he dared 
not ask for the 
lady, he would 
content himself 
with the company 
of his prospective 
father-in-law, who 
was a moderate 
drinker, and was 
therefore a little 
^ short-sighted in 
reference to the 
^ habit. On one of 
these occasions 
the old gentle- 
man told him 
there were a lot 
of sheep, some 
horses, and some 
fine pigs, that would be given to him, adding, "I should 
like you to look at the pigs." Arrived at the pen the 
young man stooped to look into it, lost his balance, and over 
he went. The hogs resented the intrusion of a drunkard by 
loud grunts of dissatisfaction. The young man didn't like 
that, and raising himself as well as he could, he said, " Hold 
your tongue ; I 'm as good as any of you." I should like to 




AN" UNEXPECTED CATASTROPHE. 



KICKED OUT OF BED. 



431 






know whether any lady would like to associate with a young 
gentleman who at any time considered himself only the equal 
of hogs. 

Two students, who occupied two different beds in the 
same room, came home very drunk one night, and groped 
their way to bed the best way they could ; but it so happened 
that both tumbled into one bed. "How d'ye get on, Bill? " 
cried one to the other. " Why, there's another fellow in my 
bed. How are you getting along ? " "I 've got a fellow in 

my bed, too." " Oh, then, 
we 'd better kick 'em both 
out ; " and at it they went, 
when by and by one of them 
was launched into the mid- 
dle of the floor. "Well, 
Bill, how have 
you managed?" 
"Why, I have 
kicked my man 
^ out. What have 
you done with 

AN AWFUL PITCH OVER. VOUrS ? " " Oh " 

said he, "My man has kicked me out." 

Another fellow, stumbling against a pump as he was reel- 
ing home, drew off, and, shutting his fists, said, "Young man, if 
you will just lay down that stick I will whip you in about three 
minutes." I remember reading of a man who was riding in 
a wagon over a very rough road, and, being intoxicated, was 
suddenly pitched out. He sat up and said, as he rubbed his 
head, " That was an awful pitch over ! If I had known what 
it was going to be, I would not have got out." 

I remember seeing an intoxicated man attempting to 
wheel another, in a similar state, in a wheel-barrow. The 




432 



A GKOTESQUE SCENE. 



tipsy gravity (you all know how silly a drunken man looks 
when he tries to appear sober) with which one held the han- 
dles, and the other tried to keep his balance, looking now on 
one side and now on another, was painfully grotesque. At 
length the barrow turned on one side, and out the man rolled. 
Turning to his companion, he said, " You are drunk." A blow 

was struck, and at it 
they went, hitting the 
air. They hit in every 
direction and struck 
nowhere, until at last one 
of them put up his hand, 
and that happened to hit 
the other, and they fell one 
upon the other. Dr. John- 
son must have had such a 
scene as that in his mind's 
eye when he described 
" Higgledy-piggledy " to be 
"A conglomerated mass of 
heterogeneous matter." 
Such sights, however ri- 
diculous, are always sad when we remember that the actors 
in them are men. 

It is worth something to be able to say, as did the Indian, 
holding the bottle in his hand, " Ah, devil's spittle, fire-water, 
broth of hell, I am your master ! Ha, ha ! " There was a 
great deal of difference between him and another Indian, who 
said, "Please to give poor Indian some rum ; me good Indian." 
"Ah, but good Indians never go round begging for rum." 
" Then me great big rascal. Give me some rum." The drink 
will make a man say or do anything to get it. 

Men often promise themselves, " It is only for this once ; 




HA, HA! 



WILL IT PAY? 433 

I will do so no more." As Shakespeare said : " I will wink, 
and it is done." Yes, done. Ah! the doing is but the 
beginning. If nothing followed, there would be no punish- 
ment for folly, no chastisement for crime. It is not done. 
The deed is done, but the results are not ephemeral. There is 
no such thing as getting rid of them. And how many fly for 
relief to the very thing which has harmed them, and thus 
multiply the spectres of the past, like "trying the hair of 
the dog that bit you," which is "laying up a store of the 
same horrors to last you a week." " What hast thou done ? " 
was the question asked of Eve after the first sin. She only 
ate some fruit, a little thing, but of what tremendous conse- 
quence. So a simple "yes " or "no," that a breath can utter, 
may mark the transition point between the eternal right and 
wrong, and fix the destiny of a man forever. Edward Irving 
once said : "Does the devil, as in the old tales, offer royal gifts 
and pardons to those who serve him ? " Some few may seem 
to make a good bargain of his service ; but what he doeth to the 
many, the sluggard in his poverty, and the violator of law, can 
tell in the penalty that surely comes. Then, young men, as 
you lift the sparkling wine to your lips in the jollity and reck- 
lessness of a night's spree, ask yourselves, " Will it pay?" 
Will it ? Yes, it will. But how ? 

It is pitiful to see educated men degraded and ruined by 
the love of drink. I was once called upon by a lady in 
Exeter, who told me that her husband was once an Indepen- 
dent minister; that he had been a popular and acceptable 
preacher for some years in Hampshire. He was invited to 
start a new interest in Nottinghamshire, and he preached 
three or four years there. He was a nervous, energetic man ; 
he preached night and day, and almost wore himself out. 
The doctor said he must take some wine and beer. " Oh, 
lear ! " said the lady, and she wept as if her heart would 



434 FEOM PULPIT TO PKISCXN". 

break, " to give beer and wine to my husband to stimulate 
him more. If the doctor had prescribed a sedative and 
ordered him rest, the people would have given it to him ; 
instead of that, he only added fuel to the fire. He did more 
work for a time, but the habit of drinking grew upon him as 
a kind of fascination ; it fastened upon him till it became a 
master passion. He left his church, and preached for two 
years at a place eight miles from Torquay. The habit grew 
so fast upon him that he gave up his charge and the ministry 
altogether ; and now I want you to see him in Exeter jail, 
where he lies awaiting his trial in July for larceny." You 
may tell me, if you please, about education ; educated men 
become drunkards as well as others. Such cases are by no 
means rare, but there is a tendency to hush and hide their 
disgrace. Men have died of disease, have died in railway 
carriages, have been crushed to death by accident, have been 
blown up in steamboats ; we may speak of these ; but when 
men fall from high positions and die drunkards, the disposi- 
tion of the people is to let down the curtain between them 
and the public, and one must not speak about them for fear 
of hurting the feelings of others. 

At some period of our lives a time comes to all of us 
when we have certain opportunities. Opportunities are pass- 
ing day by day, — opportunities of helping others, of doing 
good, of serving God, of girding ourselves with all the 
strength of Christian manhood. Duty ! Is it your duty to 
make a sacrifice for others ? Do it. Is it your duty to give 
up that which is debasing and degrading you, or bringing 
your family to poverty, wretchedness, and ruin ? Do it. Ah, 
young men, if I could but prevail upon you in the morning 
of your life to do it. 

Young men, over forty years ago I began to speak on the 
subject of temperance. I was a young man then ; I had 



AN INEFFACEABLE RECORD. 435 

forty years of life before me. Now those forty years are 
behind me ; and there is not a word I have spoken, not a 
whisper I have uttered, there is not a line I have written, 
there is not a mark I have made, that I can change to save 
my soul. It is my record. And you are making your record. 
Some of you turned over a clean, clear page this morning. 
Look at it now. Are there no blots on it, no marks on it, no 
stains on it? To-night, as you look at your record, you 
hurriedly close it up ? Ah, my friend, you cannot close it. 
You can never remove one single stain from your record. It 
is there. Sixty years of life ! It is an awful thing to live, — 
no good done, a mere life of self-indulgence and sin, leaving 
the very dregs to be drunk at last, and those dregs bitter 
beyond description. 

Young men, we need you in the strength of your man- 
hood to declare war against this fearful evil. We want you 
all ; yes, we want all classes to help us. There is a time 
coming, and coming to us all, when duty is plain. Perhaps 
some of you will feel it your duty now to join in this work 
and help us. Duty first ! Duty ! Put your hand in the 
hand of Duty, and let her lead you, whether through storm 
or sunshine, light or darkness, life or death, — do your 

DUTY. 

In your young manhood you are a hero-worshipper ; but 
the heroes who are the noblest are not always martial or 
political. It is the quiet endurance, the quiet suffering, and 
the quiet struggling, for the benefit of others and for the 
country in which we live, that constitutes the noblest heroism 
and true greatness. He who ranks himself on the side of 
right is the hero. Nero, Emperor of Rome, sat upon his 
throne clothed in purple ; a nation bowed to him ; at his nod 
men trembled. Who can touch him? In the Mamertine 
dungeon sat a man chained to a soldier, writing a letter to 



436 THE TKIUMPH OF RIGHT. 

Timothy to send him his cloak, for he was shivering in the 
cold cell of that Roman prison. What a contrast between 
the two; this poor prisoner and that mighty emperor, the 
right and the wrong. The wrong on the throne, and the 
right in the dungeon. But read on, read on ! That hateful 
wretch, a slave to every evil passion, fled from his infuriated 
soldiers, and, like a coward, with the help of an attendant, 
committed suicide, and his name is now a by-word. No 
Christian will give it to his children, and men will only occa- 
sionally give it to a dog. The other finished his letter : " I 
have fought the good fight ; I have finished my course ; I 
have kept the faith; " and wrote words that have thrilled the 
hearts and shaped the lives of millions, and will for ages yet 
to come. Those who are with the right are with God, and 
those who are with the wrong are against him. Tell me that 
such a battle as ours is Utopian ! I grant you we may never 
see the full results ; but we are seeing the growth of a public 
sentiment which, under God, is to sweep intemperance away 
forever. 

Young men, life is opening out to you ; to us it is closing. 
Oh, to be a young man again, with all the energies, with the 
fulness of life, the young blood coursing in the veins, with 
the emotion and ambition that you possess to-day, and which 
I have possessed. There is not a young man who is not 
looking towards his future position in life. You are looking 
forward into the future, trusting that you will occupy a higher 
and grander position than is yours to-day. 

Yes, and every man that started in life as you are starting 
had just the same ambition. You will be A man ; you will 
suffer and sacrifice rather than become degraded. That 
clergyman of the Church of England who was fined five shil- 
lings and costs for drunkenness, at Marylebone, did not sup- 
pose that would be the result when he started in life and 



COACHING IN CALIFOKNIA. 437 

began to take a wrong direction. That physician who once 
possessed a large and lucrative practice, who was fined in the 
same court, just after the clergyman, for attacking a man, 
when he was drunk, did not suppose that would be the end 
of it when he began to drink. A man I knew well, who was 
governor of his State and representative in Congress for 
two sessions, did not suppose that he would ever become 
the poor, miserable, drunken loafer that he did. 

There was a man whom I knew, a graduate of Harvard 
University, who became utterly degraded and ruined by 
drink. I found him in California, or rather he found me, and 
a more terrible blasphemer I never knew. He was a drunk- 
ard, almost a beast, if you can call a human being a beast ; 
he was awfully brutalized. Men gave him work occasionally 
at driving one of the coaches, but only at odd times, and for 
short distances, for they could not trust him on a long road. 
He came to see me, and I was never more disgusted with any 
man in my life. He was a man of wonderful genius. He is 
dead now, so I can mention his case. You know in Califor- 
nia coaches are driven down very steep mountains, and, to 
insure safety, they have a very strong brake, operated and 
controlled by the foot, and with this brake the coach is con- 
trolled and kept steady. A driver once said to me, as we 
were going down the side of a mountain with an incline of 
two thousand feet in two and a half miles : " These horses 
are in full gallop, but they don't pull." He had his foot on 
the brake, and we were going at such a tremendous rate that 
I had to hold on to both sides of the seat on which I sat, lest 
I should go over with the impetus of swirling round the 
curves. It is for just such occasions that these powerful 
brakes are required. The man of whom I have spoken was 
visited on his death-becl by his sister, who said to him : 
" George, why don't you keep your foot still ? What is the 

27 



438 



KEEP YOUR FOOT ON THE BRAKE. 



matter with you? What do you keep lifting your knee 
for ? " " Oh ! " he said, " I am on an awful down grade, and 
I cannot find the brake" Young man, your foot is on the 
brake to-day. Keep it there ! In God's name keep it there ! 
You may make your future just what you choose to make it. 




AN EXCITING RIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 



How many young men are going to wreck ! I once asked 
a young man why he would not sign the temperance pledge. 
"Because," said he, "I will not sign away my liberty." I 
said, u Liberty ! " And he said, " I want to do as I please." 
Young men, every man who does as he pleases, independent 
of moral, physical, and divine law, is a mean, miserable slave. 
Every man who is not held by the freedom of law is a slave 



SOWING AND HEAPING. 439 

There is the great difficulty. Young men want to do as they 
please in their young, brisk manhood. They throw off: re- 
straint ; so they take the wrong direction, and they know it. 
There is not a young man who is taking the wrong direction 
but knows it. You do not hear them defend their course ; 
they palliate it. " Oh, young men will be young men." So 
they ought to be young men. " Yes, but they will sow their 
wild oats." Then they will reap them. " Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap." Sow wheat and you reap 
wheat. Sow wild oats and you reap wild oats in the by and 
by. And many there are who possess in their bodies the 
pains, cramps, neuralgia, and rheumatism, the result of the 
sins and the follies of their youth. They must reap that 
which they have sown. 

You say, "It will come right by and by." What will? 
Begin wrong and end right ? Never ! Two divergent lines 
go on widening to all eternity. There is no coming together. 
I tell you a man is a fool who undertakes to go wrong, and 
expects he will come out right somehow or other at the end. 
If he comes back, he will come back with bleeding feet and 
torn flesh and streaming eyes and a broken heart. He must 
come back thus if he ever comes to the right. Then I ask 
you, young gentlemen, with bright prospects before you, with 
ambition, with hope, with desire, what are you going to make 
of the time that is to come ? 

There is no power on earth that tends so much to the 
degradation and to the loss of young men; to their ruin 
morally, physically, spiritually, religiously, and, I might say, 
financially, like the drink. It stands head and shoulders, 
like Saul, above all other influences and tendencies. I know 
there are a great many who do not believe it. How sad to 
know that many of the intemperate are drawn out of Young 
Men's Christian Associations, are drawn out of Sunday- 



440 OPPORTUNITIES FOR GOOD. 

schools, are drawn out of churches, are drawn out of the 
most godly homes in the land. 

Young men, you have an influence to exert. Perhaps you 
say, " I can't talk on this subject ; I am engaged largely in 
my own business, and can't employ my time in this matter." 
We should all exert our influence for good, whenever we 
have opportunity. I was reading, the other day, the history 
of the Woman of Samaria. You remember Jesus sat by the 
well, and the woman came to draw water. His disciples had 
gone to buy bread, and he was faint and weary. But the 
woman came to draw water, and there was an opportunity of 
doing good. If he had been as selfish as some of us, he 
would have said, " I am weary, I am tired, I am faint, I must 
take some refreshment, I am continually laboring, I shall have 
another opportunity." But no ; he forgot his faintness and 
his weariness ; there was an opportunity to do good, and he 
talked with the woman. Suppose he had argued like some 
of us, what would have been the result ? She would have 
gone back with the water on her shoulders. Her neighbors 
might have said, " Well, what news at the well ? " " Nothing; 
an interesting stranger sat there ; but he said nothing to me, 
and I said nothing to him." But what was the result ? She 
forgot her water-pot, and went into the city and said, " Come, 
see a man that told me all things that ever I did ; " and the 
whole city came out unto him. That was doing good as he 
had opportunity; and there is not a young man but may 
lead another into the path of truth and safety, or send him 
forth as a minister of mercy to others. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

OUR DUTY TO THE FALLEN — BRANDS PLUCKED FROM THE 
BURNING — STORY OF THE WICKEDEST MAN IN NEW YORK. 

An Incident of the War — Clean Linen First, Religion Afterwards — Work 
Among the Poor and Depraved — Dens of Vice — Bread Before Tracts — 
Speaking to an Audience of Eight Hundred Outcasts — The Wickedest 
Man in New York — Story of Orville Gardiner — A Mother's Love for a 
Wayward Son — A Thrilling Experience — A Nine Hours' Fight with a 
Jug of Whiskey — A Thoroughly Reformed Gambler and Prize-fighter — 
Tempted at Communion Service — Cutting it Off "as Square as a Piece 
of Cheese" — Daily Trials — Trusting in God — My Boyish Dislike of 
Attending Church — Incident of a Lecture Tour in Ohio — Sad Down- 
fall of a Once Devoted Christian Woman — A Minister Drunk in His Own 
Pulpit — Scene at One of My Lectures — Selling the Last Blanket for 
Drink — Death and Desolation — The Breach in the Dike — A Thrilling 
Story of Holland Life. 




E are often asked, " If you in- 
duce a number of men to sign 
the pledge, will they keep it ? " 
Here we find the value of 
organization. Take, for in- 
stance, the temperance organ- 
izations which care for these 
men, keep them, and look after them ; 
the results show one of the great ad- 
vantages of organized effort. Dr. 
Goodell of St. Louis, in a speech at 
Chautauqua, speaking of the advantages of organization, re- 
ferred to the career and work of Whitefield and Wesley ; the 
first simply a preacher, the other a preacher and organizer ; 
thus, while Whitefield is now comparatively unknown by his 
influence on the world, the power of Wesley's influence is 

441 



442 HUMANITARIANISM IN RELIGION. 

felt all round the globe. The permanency of the drunkard's 
reform is secured by taking personal interest in them. It is 
for you to lay your hand on them. You say they are " very 
hard cases." So they are, but I never found a case so hard 
that it could not be reached by perseverance. You strike 
once or twice, and then leave them because there is no response. 
Yet let us try again. It is our business to knock at the door of 
a man's heart till there is a response, if we knock till the day 
of his death. Never give him up while there is life, — never. 

Ah, there is where you can work. You can work by your 
influence ; but it must be by your example as well, so that 
you can say to those men, " Come with me," not "go as I 
direct," but " come with me." There is a mighty power in 
that word come. 

I believe in humanitarianism in religion. Some people 
have too much, and some too little. We wish to save men. 
Our object is to make this total abstinence pledge a means of 
grace to them. 

One of the men who went to the war as chaplain, a volun- 
teer chaplain, came back and said : " I soon found that my 
business was on the battle-field. I came to one poor fellow 
who had been wounded and was very feverish. He was lying 
on a wretched bed with a hard pillow, and the poor fellow was 
very ill, and very uncomfortable, and very miserable, tossing 
from side to side. I sat down by him, and I pitied him so much 
that I actually cried. I said to him, ' My poor friend, shall I 
pray with you ? ' 'I don't care whether you pray or not. 
Pray, if you want to. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ! I wish I 
had a clean shirt.' I saw that was my first work. When I had 
given him clean linen, and made his pillow easier, and his bed 
softer, I laid my cool hand upon his forehead. Moistening 
his dry lips, I held his hand in mine, and prayed with him for 
about a minute, and he cried like a child." That clean linen 



PRACTICAL MISSION WORK. 



443 



was as much a means of grace as the prayer, and under the 
circumstances it was needed first. First put forth the effort 
to relieve. You can do that with prayer. You may pray 
all the time you are putting the clean linen on. And then, 
when you pray to Him who is able to save to the uttermost, 
the prayer will touch the sufferer as it never would do under 
any other condition. 

I often see the work men 
and women are doing among the 
poor. I saw them in Philadel- 
phia, in Bedford Street, distrib- 
uting tracts. They went down 
into the lowest dens of vice, 
running the risk of 
infection and dis- 
ease and insult, en- 
tering garrets and 
cellars in the dis- 
charge of their duty 
— many of them ladies 
belonging to the best ^.; 
families. I spoke in the 
Academy of Music on the 
Monday after I had seen 
them at their good work on Sunday. I said, after alluding to 
their missionary spirit, " Ladies, you are engaged in a good 
work, a magnificent work. But, ladies, when you go to a 
home of poverty, where there is a constant battle for bread, 
where they know what hard, ^griping, grinding starvation 
means, go with your tracts in one hand, but with a loaf of 
bread in the other. Then, out of respect to you, a man will 
not tear up your tract, nor light his pipe with it when your 
back is turned, because you show sympathy with the man and 




SHALL I PRAY WITH YOU? 



444 



A WRETCHED COMPANY. 



with his class in their sorrows." So did the Master. He laid 
his hands on the afflicted. We read more about His healing 
the sick, curing diseases, and cleansing lepers than we do of 
His preaching. He went among the people and laid His 
hands on them, and as Christian people we should follow His 
example. 

I was once asked to speak to an audience of the most mis- 
erable outcasts that the eye of man ever rested upon. The 
meeting was held in a 
loft, and there were 
about eight hundred 




MY AUDIENCE OF OUTCASTS. 



outcasts present, — forlorn, hopeless, homeless, ragged, mise- 
rable. The very stench of the audience was sickening. There 
were a few ladies present — running the risk of infection — 
who came to sing a few Sunday-school hymns. There were 
gentlemen there to read passages of Scripture and expound 
them in language simple and appropriate. Some were present 
to tell them lively stories, each having its moral, and others 
to sing their hymns. It seemed as if no impression was made 
upon the audience. They sat, many of them with folded hands, 
and listened stolidly. Why did they come ? Why are they 
here ? Why do they sit so still that you could hear a whisper ? 



GIVING A SON TO JESUS. 445 

Because every one of them knew that if they remained in the 
hall for one hour, and behaved themselves, they would get a 
loaf of bread as they went out. 

"Oh, that is using wrong means altogether to bring 
men under the gospel." Is it ? Feed them with the bread 
that perisheth, if by that means you can bring them to hear 
of the bread which endureth unto eternal life. A lady in 
Glasgow said to me, " I never give a poor man a tract but I 
give a sixpence with it." When we give tracts to the hungry 
with one hand, let us give loaves of bread with the other. 
We are not setting gifts in the place of the gospel, but making 
them subservient to the gospel. 

What is our great object in the reformation of the drunk- 
ard ? What should be the great object of loving, Christian 
men ? To bring that man to Christ, and indirectly to use this 
total abstinence principle to that end. 

I have often said, It is grand to see a man fighting an evil 
habit, and none but those who have passed through such a 
battle know what a conflict it is. Orville Gardiner of New 
York was called the most wicked man in that city. More 
than once since he became a Christian he has been in my 
house ; and a warmer, tenderer heart than his never beat in 
a human bosom. I have seen him sit and cry as he said, 
" Only to think that Jesus should love me." He was a prize- 
fighter, a blasphemer, a drunkard, in every respect a wicked 
man ; and there was nothing bad that he would not do. Let 
me say here to mothers, he had a godly mother. When they 
would say to her, "Well, Mrs. Gardiner, what do you think 
of Orville now ? " she would say, " I have given him to Jesus ; 
I pray for him three times a day, and Orville will be brought 
into the kingdom yet." He had a wife and one child. The 
boy died, — was drowned. He became more desperate than 
ever, almost raving mad. " Drink ! drink ! " he said, " I drank 



446 



THE WICKEDEST MAN IN NEW YORK. 



sixty glasses in twenty-four hours." Soon after the death 
of his boy he was in a saloon, drinking with several fight- 
ing men. The room was very warm and close. They were 
smoking, and he went out. It was a bright night. Look- 
ing up overhead at the narrow strip of sky visible above 

the narrow street, he saw two 
stars shining brightly. He 
took off his hat and wiped his 
forehead, and the thought 
struck him, " I wonder where 
my boy is." It flashed upon 
him that he was not on the 
right road ever to see his boy 
again. He went home and 
sent away two men whom he 
had been training for the ring ; 
and then he went up to see his 
old mother, and they knelt and 
prayed together. "But," he 
said, "mother, I cannot be a 
Christian until I give up the 
drink, and that is the hardest 
work of all. Now," said he, 
"mother, to-day I will drink 
myself to death or I will get 
the victory." He bought a jug of liquor — it contained about 
two quarts of whiskey — and carried it in a boat across the 
river, went into the woods, found a clear space, and then set 
the jug down on a stone and began to fight it. " Now it is 
give you up forever, or I will never leave this place alive, I 
will drink the whole of you, or I will conquer you." For nine 
hours that man fought and struggled with his appetite. He 
said, " I was afraid to break the jug for fear the smell of the 




I WONDER WHERE MY BOY IS." 



FIGHTING A JUG OF WHISKEY. 



447 



liquor would drive rne mad. My knees were so sore from 
kueeling while crying to God to help me, that I could hardly 

move. I knew my mother 

was praying for me. I 

kicked a place in the soft 

loam, and took up the jug, 

holding it at arm's length, 

and placed it in the hole. 

Then I covered it up, and 

stamped upon it. And from 

that day to this not a drop 

has ever passed my lips." 

It requires strength of 

mind and 

i firmness of 

purpose to 

do such a 

thing as that. 

What I want 

to impress 

upon every 

man is this. 

You have a 

will. Did 

you ever ex- 

ercise your 

will? Did 

you ever 

resolutely 

determine, " I will f " Why, there are circumstances that 
seem almost inevitable, that you can often fight off by the 
power of your will. 

I believe there are a great many people living to-day who, 




A DESPERATE STRUGGLE. 



448 A SMOULDERING VOLCAXO. 

if they had not willed otherwise, would have been dead and 
buried years ago. I have heard it said of a woman that 
" she would have been dead years ago if it had not been for 
the power of her will." 

We say to every intemperate person, We come to offer 
you freedom from the drink. We have a " Declaration of In- 
dependence " for you to sign ; and if you sign it you declare, 
not that you are free, but that you will be free. That is it. 
However, there is a fight. I never tell a man that he can 
leave off drinking as easily as he can turn over his hand. It 
is not true. He has to fight. I love a fighter. Some men 
never fight. 

Now, we must eight. There is one thing I want to say 
to those who belong to the Gospel Temperance Society, and 
it is treading on delicate ground. But it is a matter that 
sometimes troubles us. I have heard men say that the love 
of Jesus or the grace of God has taken away their appetite. 
Now, I have a letter from a gentleman, who says, " I prayed 
earnestly, and God took from me all desire for drink." Granted 
that He may do so. But beware ! The appetite is physical, 
and is produced by the immoderate use of alcohol. And 
there is not one who has been a drunkard who can touch it, 
who can safely take to moderate drinking. I do not care if 
you call yourself fifty times a Christian. The grace of God 
will keep you from the drink ; but it will not keep you from 
the effects, if you drink. If you think the appetite is 
gone, beware how you tamper with the devil that lies there 
quiet and dormant, for the demon is ever ready to rouse into 
fury at the first drop of alcohol you put to your lips. 

The craving appetite is like the smouldering fire of a vol- 
cano within, ready to be roused by the first dram. Do not 
tamper with that appetite. Do not think, if you have ab- 
stained for years, that you can drink moderately. I remem- 



THE TIGER'S THIRST FOR BLOOD. 449 

ber reading of a man who had a pet tiger. The gentleman 
was in his study one day, his hand hanging over the chair. 
The tiger was licking his hand, and when the man attempted 
to remove it, the animal, with a low growl and a snarl, fixed 
its claws in his arm, and then crouched with its ears thrown 
back, its eyes green, waving its tail. There was danger. The 
man kept his eyes fixed upon the tiger, rang the bell, and 



A MOMENT OF DANGER. 

ordered the servant to bring his pistol, with which he shot 
the tiger dead. He then looked at his hand, and observed 
blood upon it. The taste had aroused the tiger's dormant 
appetite for blood. So is it with the appetite for drink, which 
is ever ready, like the tiger, to make the fatal spring when- 
ever it is tampered with. 

The appetite for intoxicating drinks, what is it ? As near 
as I can define it, it is a mysterious something, produced in 
certain systems by the use of intoxicating liquors, that will 
at once respond to alcohol, when touched by it. You cannot 



450 TEMPTED AT COMMUNION SERVICE! 

make a moderate drinker out of a drunkard. I do not care 
how many times he joins the church. It has been tried over 
and over again. Total abstinence is absolutely necessary to 
save a man who has once been a drunkard. 

A gentleman in New York said to me : " I was a sad 
drunkard. I became a Christian at Mr. Moody's hippodrome 
meetings in New York. I had signed the pledge ; I wanted 
to work for the Lord ; I joined the church of a minister who 
sympathized with me ; and I had been working in his gospel 
tent and trying to rescue men. Well, I believed and boasted 
that the love of Jesus had taken away all appetite for the drink. 
Three weeks ago there was a communion service. I smelt 
the drink and wanted it. My fingers began to tingle. There 
was an itching, burning, dry sensation in my throat. / 
wanted it. I tried to pray. I tried to think that I had come 
there to ' show the Lord's death till he come.' It was no 
use. I gripped the seat. I ground my teeth. I sat in per- 
fect agony. The wine approached me. I shuddered from 
head to foot. If I had taken it in my hand, there would not 
have been a drop of it left in the cup. I know it. I have 
been fighting that appetite for three weeks with all the power 
I had to fight anything, and am very glad you have comforted 
me by the assurance that I may yet be a child of God, and 
still be subject to this terrible temptation." 

The grace of God enables a man to overcome, but it does 
not take away from him the appetite. It can. The grace of 
God is able to do anything, but that is not its province. It 
can take away the appetite, I suppose; but in how many 
cases has it done so ? I could give you so many fearful, sor- 
rowful illustrations of this over-confidence, not in the grace 
of God, but in mistaken notions of the province of the grace 
of God ; and I say to every reformed drunkard, whether you 
are a Christian or not, let the drink alone. Total absti- 
nence IS YOUR ONLY SAFETY. 



CUTTING IT OFF SQUAKELY. 451 

A gentleman was so far enslaved that he was known to 
take a quart of brandy in a day. How he stood it no one 
knew. He was a fine business man, and yet, in the estima- 
tion of those who knew him well, he was ruining himself. 
One day, when in the house, he said : " Wife, come and sit 
on my knee." She sat there, and then she said : " If my 
husband did not drink, I should be the happiest woman in 
the world." "Well, my dear," he replied, " I married you to 
make you happy, and I ought to do so ; and if that will make 
you happy, I will never drink another drop as long as I live." 
Now, that man cut it off " as square as a piece of cheese," no 
slivers, no splinters, and kept his word for years without any 
practical belief in Christianity. Walking down the street 
with him a little while ago, he said : u Do you see that red- 
fronted drinking-saloon ? Well, I have been for many years 
afraid to pass the door of that house, so I used to turn down 
another street and go round it ; but, Mr. Gough, since I have 
had the grace of God in my heart, I go right by that 
saloon ; and if I have the slightest desire for drink, I breathe 
a prayer, 4 God, keep me for Christ's sake,' and I go by it 
safely." 

Now, when a man abstains from drink, and endeavors to 
control an appetite in his own strength, he does it at daily 
risk ; but when he puts forth all the energy God has given 
him, and trusts God for the result, he is safe, absolutely safe. 
It # is there we seek to bring the man. We cannot truly tell 
a man that he will not have to fight after he signs the 
temperance pledge. I do not believe in a Christian life with- 
out work and fighting. I have no* patience with men who 
talk of this life being no battlefield. I have heard them 
sing : — 

" Nothing for me to do, 
Nothing for me to do." 



452 



A LITTLE MARTYR. 



And I have also heard them sing : — 

" My willing soul would stay 
In such a frame as this 
And sit and sing herself away 
To everlasting bliss." 

Now, I have not very much sympathy with that kind of 
negative religion. When I was a boy, my father always 
demanded my attendance at church, and I grew so wearied 

of it that I hated it. It 
was very unpleasant. I sat 
on a hard bench, with my 
feet dangling over, and my 
poor little legs would get 
"pins and needles," and 
they would go to sleep, and 
I dared not rub them, for 
father sat beside me. It was 
not very comforting, when 
I was suffering on a hot July 
afternoon in every nerve of 
my body, to hear them sing : 

" Congregations ne'er break up, 
And Sabbaths never end," 

and I thought if heaven 
was a place where we were 
compelled to sit constantly on uncomfortable seats, I did not 
care to go there. 

Let me relate one incident, to give you more fully an idea of 
what we mean when we say we want to bring men to Christ 
as well as to make them teetotalers. I was once travelling 
in Ohio on a lecturing tour, and, on entering the car, I found 
it very much crowded ; but I espied one vacant seat by the 
side of a gentleman. I said to him : " May I sit by you ? " 




MEMORIES OF MY YOUTHFUL DAYS. 



AN HONEST CONFESSION. 



453 



" Yes, Mr. Gougli, you may. I am very glad to have you for 
a fellow-traveller. I heard you speak last night. Now, 
I 'm a pretty hard drinker. I look like it, don't I ? " " Some- 
what." " I am worth some property, but I might be worth 




SHE BURST OUT CRYING AND DROPPED ON HER KNEES. 



aundreds where I am only worth tens to-day. I 'm a pretty 
tough character, but I have always considered myself a man 
of my word. After hearing your lecture, I went home, and 
said to my wife, 4 1 will never drink another drop of liquor 
as long . as I live.' I thought she would be tickled at it, 
but she burst out crying and dropped on her knees. I 
did n't like it. I am not that sort of a man. I hadn 't been 
28 



454 EFFICACY OF PKAYER. 

on my knees since I was eight years old ; and as for the in- 
side of a church, I hardly know what it is. I did n't like it, 
and I said : ' What in thunder are you on your knees for ? ' I 
went to bed sulky ; got up this morning, and I wanted whis- 
key. I had never promised anybody before that I would not 
drink ; but I had done so now, and I 'm a man of my word. 
I 'm going to see about a piece of property I bought when 
I was drunk. I 'm going right among the drink and into 
temptation, but I would rather be carried home dead to-night 
than carried home drunk. I want whiskey now, but I don't 
mean to have it. I tried to take my breakfast this morning. 
I could n't get it down ; the more I tried to eat, the more I 
loathed the food. I wanted whiskey ; I felt as if I must have 
whiskey. And I knew where I was going." Then the tears 
came, and the lip quivered as he said : " Well, Mr. Gough, 
you may think it very queer of me, but I have been on my 
knees this morning for over an hour." " Have you ? " " Yes." 
" Then," I said, " keep there, and you will go home sober. 
No man ever drank a glass of liquor while he was honestly 
praying God to keep him from it." There is safety there, 
but all the rest is risk. A man may keep the pledge to the 
day of his death, but he does it at a risk. Thus we bring 
the intemperate not only to fight the battle, but to trust in 
God for the victory. 

Are there no men ruined who ever had the grace of God 
in their hearts? Will you dare to say that every deposed 
minister never had the grace of God in his heart ? Will you 
tell me that the wife of a minister, who spent eight years in 
China, teaching Chinese women Christianity as a devoted 
Christian, and then came home and delivered lectures to 
ladies on the wants of the women of China, for the purpose 
of raising money, not for herself, but for them, — will you 
tell me she had no grace in her heart? And yet she died 






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INTEMPERANCE IN THE PULPIT. 457 

drunk in a hotel in Boston, an empty brandy-bottle by her 
side. This lady I personally knew. 

I may be approaching delicate subjects, but I have to deal 
with FACTS, not theories. I have to deal with men and their 
experiences. I knew a clergyman, from whose pulpit I once 
spoke. I was told that he was one of the most eloquent of 
ministers. He was the pastor of a very fashionable church. 
On the night that I spoke in his church he was to offer prayer. 
He was very much intoxicated. I was asked some time after 
if I would testify in the case. They were going to try him 
for drunkenness. I said, "No, I will give no testimony what- 
ever." He was deposed, and that doctor of divinity, who had 
preached the gospel to thousands for eight and twenty years, 
has since stood in a low dram-shop, with his face bruised and 
blackened, and a number of degraded and dissolute men jeer- 
ing him, — stood there and preached his old sermons, for 
whiskey to stave off delirium tremens. 

Now we appeal to you in behalf of those who cannot drink 
moderately, and we ask you to help us in putting away a 
temptation from their very sight and from their senses. Oh, 
it is pitiful to find, as we do, in many a family, a victim of 
this vice, a son, a brother, a father, a husband, with no help in 
his home. 

Sometimes we find poverty and sorrow. Once we found 
a dead child lying in one corner of a room, unburied, and the 
living inmates had nothing to eat but a bit of dry bread and 
a cup of weak tea. Everything else in the house was gone, 
because the father was a drunkard, and he had taken the 
last blankets and pawned them for drink. This is a positive 
fact, for I know the circumstances, and the drunkard was 
once a gentleman. Dr. Alfred Carpenter said at Croydon 
that he knew nearly a score of similar cases. Well, we laid 
hold of this poor victim. He said, " I will sign the pledge." 



458 AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

We turned to his relatives, " Will you sign it ? " " Oh no, we 
don't drink enough to hurt us, and we must have our little 
drop of beer." "What, will you dare to bring it into the 
house, and let him see it, and smell it, and see you drink it ? 
Do you know what you are doing ? Do you know that the 
very sight of it rouses in him a desire for it ? The smell of 
it sends a stinging, burning, itching sensation through every 
nerve of his system. Let him taste it, and you cannot save 
him." "We cannot help it, he may sign if he will; and he 
ought to. But we cannot do without our beer." And for 
the sake of a little drop of beer, there are those who will 
not sign the pledge to save husband, brother, son, or father. 
Now the incident just related is a fact. We are stating that 
which is true. We wish to appeal to those who thus hold 
themselves aloof. It is on the ground of helping others that 
we appeal to you. 

We do not tell the respectable, moderate drinker he is 
ruining himself. Certainly not. There are to-day respecta- 
ble, Christian, moderate drinkers. I do not judge them. I 
can only judge them from my standpoint, and I have no right 
to condemn them. But I have a right to throw upon their 
pathway all the light God gives me the ability to do, so that 
they may measure in one hand the glass of ale, and in the 
other the salvation of a man 5 and let them remember that 
they must stand in the day of judgment to render their ac- 
count. 

There are times in every man's life when duty is plain, 
though it may be difficult to perform. Ease, comfort, luxury, 
inclination, stand in the way. If duty is performed, it must 
be at a sacrifice ; but it always "pays " to take the hand of 
duty, and let her lead, whether through storm or sunshine, 
darkness or light, grief or joy, life or death. Duty ! duty ! 
always first. Men who have fought mighty battles have 



A STORY OF HOLLAND. 459 

found that whenever they have yielded to sloth, or fear, or 
inclination, it has been at a loss ; and when triumphing over 
every obstacle and apparent impossibility, and have obeyed 
the stern demands of duty, it has paid them — gloriously paid 
them. 

On the northernmost part of the mainland of Holland 
there is a point of low land extending nine miles, unprotected 
by any natural defence against invasion by the sea. More 
than two hundred years ago the inhabitants undertook the 
gigantic task of raising dykes of clay, earth, and stone ; and 
now, behind the shelter of the embankment, numerous vil- 
lages and towns are safe from their powerful enemy, the sea. 
The spire of Alkmond, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, is on a 
level with the top of the dyke. A master is appointed to 
oversee the workmen constantly employed in watching those 
dykes. A century ago, one November night, a fierce gale 
was blowing from the northwest, and increasing in fury every 
minute. The dyke-master had planned to go to Amsterdam 
It was the time of the spring tide. He thought of the dyke. 
Should he give up his pleasant trip to Amsterdam? The 
dyke ! The urgency of his visit was great. But the dyke ! 
His friends would be sadly disappointed if he did not go to 
Amsterdam. But the dyke! Inclination against duty. It 
was six o'clock; the tide had turned, and would rise till 
twelve. But at seven the stage would start for Amsterdam. 
Should he go? A struggle; his inclination was to go, his 
duty was to remain. He looked up at the wild and fast in- 
creasing storm, and he decided to go with all speed to his 
post of duty. 

When he reached the dyke, the men, two hundred in 
number, were in utter and almost hopeless confusion. The 
storm had risen to a hurricane. They had used up their 
store of hurdles and canvas in striving to check the inroads 



460 DOING HIS DUTY. 

of their relentless foe. Then they shonted, " Here 's the 
master ! Thanks be to God ! All right now ! " The master 
placed every man at his post; and then a glorious battle 
commenced, — the battle of men against the furious ocean. 
About half past eleven the cry was heard from the centre,, 
" Help ! help ! " " What 's the matter ? " " Four stones out 
at once." "Where?" "Here." The master flung a rope 
round his waist, four men did the same, forty hands held the 
ends of the ropes as the five men glided down the sloping 
side of the dyke. The waves buffeted and tossed them, 
bruising their limbs and bodies ; but they closed the breach, 
and were then drawn up. Cries for help came from all 
quarters. "Is there any more canvas?" "All gone!" 
" Any more hurdles ? " " All gone ! " " Off with your coats, 
men, and thrust them into the breach," shouted the master, 
throwing off his own. There they stood, half naked in the 
raging November storm. At a quarter to twelve, only a few 
inches higher, and the sea would rush over the dyke, and not a 
living soul would be left in all North Holland. The coats were 
all used up. The tide had yet to rise till midnight. " Now, 
my men," said the master, " we can do no more. Down on 
your knees, every one of you, and pray to God." And two 
hundred men knelt down on the shaking, trembling dyke, 
amid the roar of the storm and the thunder of the waves,, 
and lifted up their hands and hearts to Him who could say to 
the waves, "Be still!" And, as of old, he heard them, and 
saved them out of their trouble. And the people of Alkmond 
were eating and drinking, dancing and singing, and never 
knew that there was but an inch between them and death 
during that terrible night. A country was saved by one 
man's decision for duty. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

MEN AND METHODS, MANNERS AND MOEALS OF OUR OWN 
TIMES — ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS. 

Reflection — Aping Extravagance — Beginning Life Where Their Fathers 
Left Off — Odd Reasons for Getting Married — Butterflies of Fashion — 
Old Aunt Chloe — " Tie 'Em Together " — The Husband Who Proclaimed 
Himself "a Regular Julius Csesar" — What His Wife Thought About 
It— "Who Keeps This House?"— How the Question Was Settled- 
Family Jars —" Will the Sheriff Sell Me?"— Power of Money — Spoils 
of Office — "Grandpa, Have a Weed?" — Old-time Politeness — Dif- 
ference Between " Then " and " Now " — "I Knocks My Boys Down and 
They Ain't Good" — Influence of Example — A Father's Cruel Act — 
"Do It Again, Papa" — Henry Clay and the Farmer — John on His 
Knees — The Ship Captain and the Sailor — Past and Present — Elisha 
Kent Kane — A Remarkable Career — One of Sin's Victims — 
Broken Hopes and Buried Aspirations — The Alabaster Box. 




KNOW that it is pleasant 
to imagine our own era as 
the grandest that was ever 
known, but let us turn the 
cool, calm eye of reflection 
on our boastings and see 
how much that seems gold, 
shrivels here and there into tinsel. 
When progress touches our fancied 
interests, what we call our rights, — 
our passions, or appetites — we often 
cry out against it as fanaticism. Is not much that we call 
refinement a tendency to ape the extravagances and follies of 
the grade above us in the social scale, an effort to grasp the 
shadow or flitter of an external existence, to the wholesale 

461 



462 WHY SOME PEOPLE MARRY. 

neglect of the inner life ? Just as a certain kind of liquid 
assists in polishing steel to the brightness of a mirror, but, 
if not wiped away, will bite into the steel, so I believe much 
of the so-called refinement applied to brighter society may 
consume its very life by the rust it has deposited. 

In the old times a couple married for love, not display, for 
a happy, economical home and a plain fireside, — their best 
company, each other. Now, do not a couple often begin in 
surroundings just where their fathers ended ? And the mar- 
riage relation, with its hallowed influence from which ought 
to spring the kindly offices of domestic love and the gentle 
charities of social life, is made a matter of barter and sale, 
and family life is metamorphosed into a wretched struggle 
for fashionable display. 

In the entire history of the race, it has been seen that just 
in proportion as families were broken, divided, ajar, mil- 
dewed in any way, just so far the communities, the nations, 
composed of such families, bear ineffaceable signs of those 
errors. 

Nowadays, with what thoughtless haste, for what frivolous 
reasons, are marriages made. One man marries to increase 
his respectability ; another, to please his friends ; another, to 
spite his relations ; another, to procure service without being 
obliged to pay for it, his object, like any other slaveholder's, 
being to secure the longest 'hours of laborious toil, the most 
thorough guardianship of his interests, without fee or reward 
but the honor and glory of serving him and receiving his 
approval. Generous, magnanimous being ! We hear of a 
widow, inconsolable for the loss of her husband, who took 
another to keep herself from fretting over her loss. Prudent 
lady ! One young girl gets married because the children had 
never seen a wedding, and it would gratify them. A young 
man married an Irish servant girl. That was all right, but 



OLD AUNT CHLOE'S OPINION. 463 

he gave as a reason that if he married in his own sphere, he 
must keep a girl for his wife's service, so he married the girl 
instead. 

It is well there are differences of opinion as to suitability 
and compatibility. A man once said, " Now if everybody had 
been of my opinion, they would all have wanted my old wo- 
man ; " another man said, " If everybody had ..been of my 
opinion, nobody would have had her." One girl will marry 
because she does not like to work, and wants to be supported 
in doing nothing, and to have plenty of leisure. I sometimes 
see these silly butterflies fluttering on the streets in abundance 
of flounces, cheap jewelry, and head-gear that you would not 
break the second commandment to worship, for it is unlike 
anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in 
the waters under the earth. I think sadly of the home and 
family of which they will make a wreck, when the lowliest 
households might be, as many are, homes of brightness and 
happiness. 

God be thanked that here, in this marred and furrowed 
earth of ours, the peace and truth and love and goodness 
that is the very essence of all home happiness is the right of 
no one class, is the privilege of the lowliest as well as the 
loftiest. Old Aunt Chloe said, when asked "When is de 
married or single life de happiest ? " " Dat depends on how 
dey enjoy demselves." I know it is the fashion to make old 
maids and old bachelors subjects of ridicule ; but would it 
not be better to be laughed at for not being married than 
never to be able to laugh because you are married? If a 
woman is remarkably neat in her person, she'll be an old 
maid. Is she reserved toward gentlemen, diffident, retiring ? 
Oh, she '11 assuredly be an old maid. Is she frugal in her 
expenses ? she '11 certainly be an old maid. Is she exact in 
her domestic concerns ? there 's no doubt she '11 be an old 



464 GOVERNOR TRUMBULL'S ADVICE. 

maid. Is she kind to animals ? she is cut out for an old maid. 
Neatness, modesty, economy, thrift, order, and humanity seem 
to be the never-failing characteristics of that terrible creature, 
an old maid. I assure you they are not all fussy bodies, 
pushing themselves in everywhere, and loving, above all 
things, to hear themselves talk. What a noble list of spin- 
sters' names could be given: Florence Nightingale, Mary 
Lyon, Miss Carpenter, Emily Faithful, Fidelia Fisk, Clara 
Barton, Miss Dix, and a host of others. Some of the best 
women that have blessed the world were of this class, besides 
the numbers whose presence is like a cool shadow on a sum- 
mer's day, and whose quiet lives of doing and enduring 
are sending rills of blessing in myriad directions over the 
land. 

How many divorces would be avoided if the advice of 
Governor Trumbull was taken, who, when a friend applied 
to him for advice about a divorce, asked, " How did you treat 
your wife when you were courting her?" "Why, I treated 
her as well as I could, for I loved her dearly." " Well," said 
the Governor, " go home and court her as you did then, for a 
year, and come and tell me the result." At the year's end, it 
was, " My wife and I are as happy as when we first married, 
and I mean to court her all the days of my life." Ah, yes, 
and why should he not ? 

It is hard for some people to live peaceably together. A 
couple, who were constantly quarrelling, were seated by the 
fireside, where the cat and dog were lying quietly side by 
side. " Ah," said the woman, " it 's a shame we should be 
always quarrelling. See how peaceably the cat and dog get 
along." "Oh," growled the husband, "just tie 'em together, 
and then see how they '11 fight." 

It is amusing to hear some men boast of their government 
at home. One of this class, in the absence of his wife, invited 



JULIUS CAESAR AT HOME. 4(55 

some gentlemen friends to spend an evening with him. The 
conversation turned on the marriage relation, when the host 
boasted, " I am master in my own house. I do not believe 
in woman's ruling. I do as I please, and I make my wife 
submit to my rule. I am a regular Julius Caesar in my own 




JULIUS clesak's downfall. 

house." Just then his wife came in, and said, "Gentlemen, 
you had better go home, and Julius Osar will just walk 
right up-stairs along with me." 

A traveller stopped at a house for rest and refreshment. 
He knocked at the front door, but no one responded. He 
knocked again, and with the same result. After pounding 
away vigorously for some time without obtaining an answer" 
he went round to the back of the house, and found a little 



466 



SETTLING A FAMILY DISPUTE. 



white-headed old man and his wife engaged in a most furious 
fight. "Hello!" said the traveller, "hello! who keeps this 
house ? " The little man, gasping for breath, panted out, 
" Stranger, that 's just what we are trying to settle." 

There is a class of young women who are always on the look- 
out for a son-in-law for their mother, who prefer ostentation to 
happiness, and a dandy husband to a mechanic. One girl is 
reported to have said, " I '11 marry any man with plenty of 




INTERRUPTING A FAMILY ROW. 



money, if he is so ugly I have to scream every time I look 
at him." On the other hand, we know that many times a 
man dives into the sea of matrimony and brings up a pearl. 
A bankrupt merchant returned home one night and said 
to his wife, "My dear, I am ruined; everything we have 
is in the hands of the sheriff." After a few moments of 
silence, his noble wife, looking him calmly in the face, said, 
"Will the sheriff sell you?" "No." "Will he sell me?" 
" No, no," " Then don't say we have lost everything. All 
that is most profitable to us, manhood, womanhood, remains ; 



THE POWEK OF MONEY. 467 

we have but lost the result of our skill and industry; we 
may make another fortune if our hearts and hands are left 
us." If men and women would take as much pains to hold 
each other as they do to catch each other, there would be 
fewer unhappy marriages. The marriage relation touches 
with beauty or blight, with fragrance or ill savor, every after- 
hour of life and of influence ; yes, it takes hold of eternity in 
its outcome. 

As a people, we boast of our independence. True, we are 
republicans, and yet we have a king ; we are Christians, and 
yet we worship the meanest of all gods, and bow the knee to 
Mammon. The purse-bearing scoundrel is honored, while the 
moneyless person is despised. Even the law can do little for 
me if I have not the cash, and there seems to be one legisla- 
tion for the poor and another for the rich ; the moneyed villain 
is out on bail, while the moneyless one pines in prison. You 
can scarcely convict a man of crime in some of our cities, and 
the question too often is, not of right or wrong, guilt or inno- 
cence, but wealth or poverty. Almost every man who can 
command money can command an entree to circles called 
select, from which a superior poor man is debarred. 

Can you not point out men whose lives are gross, with no 
redeeming qualities of education, genius, or refinement, whose 
names are on the roll of magistrates, judges, and members of 
Congress, and who are admitted to society into which a poor 
man hardly dares to look? The colored woman was right when 
she said, " 'Tain't de white nor yet de black folks dat hab de 
most influence in dis world, it 's de yaller boys." A man is 
too often measured by his wealth rather than by his qualities 
and character. Oh, the servile baseness of money worship, 
mothers cast their children under the wheels of this Jugger- 
naut; men grow prematurely gray in its pursuit; women 
scheme and wreck heart and soul to gain its favor; minis- 



468 



GREED FOR OFFICE. 



ters of the gospel prostrate themselves before it ; and even 
churches strive to catch the moneyed man, and pass the 
lowly poor man by with indifference, or worse. In the ab- 
sorption of money-getting, men forget their higher destiny. 
A little girl said to her mother, " If I am good, I shall go to 
heaven." " Yes, dear." " Will grandpa be there ? " "I hope 
so." " Will you be there ? " "I hope so, darling." " Will 

Jemmy and Susie be there?" 

" Oh, yes, dear, and papa, too, I 

hope." " Oh, no," said the child, 

Papa won't be there, he can't 

leave the store." 

We do not boast 
much of our political 
honesty. There are 
honorable exceptions, 
it is true ; but where 
can be found more 
corruption than 
among our politicians? 
The object of legisla- 
tion is the greatest 
good of the greatest 
number ; but some of 
our politicians understand the greatest number to be number 
one. It is a grand scramble for self, and for the spoils of 
office. What a mania for office ! Anything will do, if only 
it is an office ; and what strutting there is over it ! A man 
having been appointed constable in a small town, one of his 
children asked, "Mother, are we all constables?" "No, 
my child, only father and me." In revenge for some per- 
sonal slight, or in gratification of some petty malice, some 
men would ruin their country if they could, and when one 




ELECTED CONSTABLE — " FATHER AND ME 



BOYS OF THE PERIOD. 469 

party has thrown them over, they generally have strength 
enough to swim to the other. Well, the Constitution says 
all classes are to be fairly represented, so I suppose that occa- 
sionally a fool or a rogue must be elected to represent the 
fools and rogues in his district. 

Is parental government acknowledged and enforced now 
as it was in the old time ? Our mere boys are men now, and 
our mere girls are fine ladies. They assume to know more 
than the old fogies, their parents, and affect the most dis- 
respectful familiarity with the old folks. "Grandpa, have 
a weed?" "A what?" "A weed, you know, a cigar." 
" No, sir, I do not smoke ; I never did smoke." " Ah, then, 
I'd advise you never to begin." They early evince their 
dislike of system or work. "I have the tenderest-hearted 
boys in the world," said a father ; " I can't ask one of 'em to 
fetch a pail of water but he busts out a-crying." " Gus, have 
you had it out with the old boy ? " " Yes, and what do you 
thing the undutiful old governor says ? " "I have n't an idea." 
" Why, he says I must do something to get my own living ; I 
can't do that, you know." An old gentleman said : " When 
I was a young man, it was customary to lift the hat when 
passing a schoolhouse, nowadays you must look in every 
direction to escape a flying brick-bat." How many of our 
young men have yet to learn that they know but little ! How 
hard for some young men to say, " I do not know ! " It is 
ridiculous and contemptible to pretend knowledge we have 
never gained. There is nothing unmanly in acknowledging 
ignorance. One of our conceited youngsters, who had but 
one idea, — and that died for want of company, — said: "Ah, 
I think Shakespeare is a very much overrated man." 

In the discipline of children we have been so careful to 
avoid one extreme that we have run into the other. — We are 
justly indignant at the tales of cruelty to children in schools, 



470 PUTTING A THREAT INTO EXECUTION. 

and at parents whipping them to break their wills, and at the 
punishments so out of all proportion to the offence, and at 
the exercise of cruel discipline to make them good. A father 
said : "I orders my boys down to prayers night and morning, 
and when they won't go down, I knocks 'em down, and yet 
they ain't good." But there is a medium between that and 
the lax discipline of to-day. Children have no right to rule 
in the household, and it is not the best and truest love that 
will remit punishment for all offences. 

I know but little, and therefore can say but little, about 
the discipline of children. They are wonderful creatures ; 
the child is, indeed, the father of the man ; there is as much 
human nature in them as in the older ones, and some of them 
are hard to manage. A gentleman told me that his little 
boy, about six years of age, was in the habit of going upon 
the ice while it was in a dangerous condition. Finding him 
there one morning, he said : " Now, if I catch you on the ice 
again, I will duck you." The next morning he found him 
there again, and declared a second time : " Now, if I find you 
on the ice again, I '11 duck you." Said the boy : " You said 
you would yesterday." The next morning the boy was on 
the ice again, as was to be expected. The father said : " If I 
keep my word with my boy, I must duck him. I broke the 
ice and plunged him into the water. The first word he 
said when I took him out was, 'Do it again, papa.' I 
plunged him in again. Blowing out the water from his 
mouth and nostrils, he gasped, 'Do it again, papa.' Four 
times I plunged that boy under the water ; each time it was, 
' Do it again, papa.' Fearing that another ducking might be 
dangerous to him, I was compelled to let him go, mortified 
that I could not produce any impression upon him by his 
intended punishment." A little boy, in saying his prayers, 
went on : " Oh, Lord, bless papa and mamma and Susie and 



A PRAYER FOR "OLD BESSIE." 471 

everybody but nasty old Bessie." " Why, my dear, what has 
Bessie done?" "She stole my peanuts." "I told her to 
take away the peanuts ; she is very kind and good to you, 
and that is a naughty prayer." ' The boy being sullen, the 
mother left him without the usual good-night kiss ; when she 
reached the foot of the stairs, she heard him call, " Mamma, 
mamma." "Well, my son, what is it?" "God bless old 
nasty Bessie, I don't care." Ah, heaven bless the little ones 
so soon to take our places. 

In the matter of keeping the Sabbath, have we improved 
on the example of the early fathers ? When we advocate the 
strict observance of the Sabbath Day we are jeeringly re- 
minded of the " Connecticut Blue Laws," in which, we are 
told, a man was prohibited from kissing his wife on Sundays. 
Ah, yes ! Connecticut Blue Laws ! We want no Connec- 
ticut Blue Laws, and we have made merry over such pro- 
visions as these : " No one shall travel, cook victuals, cut hair, 
or shave on the Sabbath Day. No woman shall kiss her child 
on the Sabbath or fasting day. No one shall read common 
prayer, keep Christmas or saint days, make mince pies, 
dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music except 
the drum, trumpet, and jews-harp. Every male shall have 
his hair cut round according to a cap." Well, 'tis a pity, 
perhaps,. but these "Blue Laws" are without historical foun- 
dation. The author of the fiction was Samuel Peters, a 
loyalist and refugee, who published it in England in 1781. 
Trumbull, the conscientious historian of Connecticut, said of 
him that, of all men with whom he had ever been acquainted, 
Dr. Peters was the least to be depended on as to any state- 
ment of fact. 

The test of the matter is to examine the fruit of the things 
we scorn. Are the men and women of to-day, as a whole, 
better, truer, nobler, than they were in the early days of New 
29 



4T2 



A PEEP IXTO THE CABIN. 



England. Is not the greater part of the courage and noble- 
ness, the truth, and loyalty to duty and right, and indeed of 
the stalwart virtues as well as of those that beautify the 
lowlier places of life, the direct outcome of the very prin- 
ciples and training in which we find weak places to ridicule? 
When Henry Clay was visiting Berkshire he asked an old 
farmer, "What do you raise on these hills?" "Men," was the 
reply. "Your farms are 
not very productive; you 
must work hard to get a 
crop." " We do work hard, 
and when night comes we 
are too tired to 
sin." 

You may 
speak sneering- 
ly of a man's 
religion, but 
you will trust 
him more for it; 
the mere act of 
worship has set- 
tled the matter. 
A shipmaster, having discharged his cargo and crew, em- 
ployed a sailor to take charge of his ship during his absence 
in the country. He had little confidence in the man — he 
believed all sailors would steal ; but as he could do no better, 
he put everything possible under lock and key. Before leav- 
ing for the country, in the morning, he thought he would 
take an early peep at his ship. He quietly stepped on board, 
and, unperceived, opened the cabin door. There was John on 
his knees, the Bible opened before him. He carefully closed 
the door, and, when John appeared, he handed him a bunch 




HE OPENED THE CABIN DOOB.' 



PROGRESS OF THE AGE. 473 

of keys, " Here, John, you had better open all these drawers 
and trunks, and air the things. Keep everything snug, I 
shall be home in a few days." 

There is much to be deplored, and, we hope, remedied. 
There are encouraging improvements in many directions ; in 
a more universal acknowledgment of the claims of humanity ; 
in our treatment of the insane, and the prisoner; in our 
homes for the aged, the friendless, the orphan, the street 
boys, and the penitent; in our reform schools, industrial 
schools, refuges, asylums, hospitals, and other benevolent 
institutions ; in the Sunday schools, mission schools, and the 
great Christian institutions, — the Bible Society, missionary 
societies, both home and foreign, tract, temperance, educa- 
tional, seamen's friend, and kindred associations, — almost 
unknown in the beginning of this century; in our magnifi- 
cent system of free education, the admiration of the world ; 
in our colleges, academies, and seminaries of learning ; in the 
recognition of woman's rights, the emancipation of millions 
of human beings from bondage, establishing freedom for 
every man, woman, and child in our beloved country for- 
ever, — all this, and more, should give us courage for the 
future, and, may be some excuse for our boasting. 

In some directions, as in education, I think we are inclined 
to the extreme, and I believe the graduates of our colleges 
forty years ago were more solidly educated than the gradu- 
ates of to-day. What we lack in quality we make up in 
quantity. The course of study pursued in some of our schools, 
as published in their advertisements, fairly makes one's head 
ache to read. In some schools, students acquire knowledge 
at the expense of muscle, and feed the mind at the sacrifice 
of health. I have known young girls who have studied them- 
selves to death, and others who have graduated with sj^stems 
broken down and exhausted, requiring the utmost care, for 



474 EDUCATION VERSUS HEALTH. 

years, to save life even. I know some men who are broken in 
health to-day, and will be to the end, occasioned by overwork 
in their determination to keep up and graduate with honor. 
If I had children, I think I would rather have them at sixteen 
with vigorous health and fine physiques, though compara- 
tively ignorant, than graduated at twenty with the highest 
honors and broken health, useless to the world, sufferers them- 
selves, and a burden to their friends. I do not depreciate 
learning, but I do believe in health. 

But what has all this to do with us ; this reckoning, this 
observation we have been taking of the past and present, the 
"now " and " then," in the morning light of to-day? Society 
is composed of individuals, each the centre of a circle. It is 
to the individual that our thoughts turn as we think of grand 
inventions, mighty reforms, and discoveries that have blessed 
the world. Astronomy, science, revolutions, explorations, all 
bring to us vividly some one individual associated forever 
with the plan or leadership. Turn to Arctic explorations, and 
at once there rises before us the man who, at twenty-one, feel- 
ing himself doomed to a painful life, resolved never to marry ; 
attacked by the plague in Egypt, by the coast-fever in Africa, 
by lockjaw in Philadelphia ; wounded by a lance in Mexico 
and reported dead ; smitten with paralysis ; chronically and 
acutely afflicted ; bearing up under every form of suffering ; 
ransacking the earth, undertaking gigantic toils, braving 
every kind of danger ; aiming at nothing for himself, but 
dedicating a life of daring devotion to the service of human- 
ity, and dying at the age of thirty-seven, — Elisha Kent Kane. 

Young men, you are to mould the future; and as you 
mould yourselves, so will you be a power for good or evil. 
That was fine statesmanship that, in a great public work of 
old historic times, planned the repairing of a battered and 
broken-down city's wall, to be done by each man over against 



PAST AND PRESENT. . 475 

his own house, until from one great gate to another, from one 
eminence to another, the repairs met, and the last cementing 
was finished with such a universal festival of gladness as is 
not to be seen in our boasted grander days. Can it not be so 
with us ? All of us bear, inseparably, a real, sharply defined 
relation to the " then " of the past, to the golden " now " that 
is, and to the " then " that is to come. One is gone by, and 
henceforth can only be a radiant, encouraging star in memory, 
or a beacon to warn us off the breakers, as far as the choices 
of this hour are concerned. But oh, the golden "now," 
freighted with opportunities, with wholesome prickings of 
penitent memories, with its inviting voices, telling us what we 
can do for the world. God be thanked, each one of us can 
make the "now" that is, the starting-point for a "then " shin- 
ing "more and more unto the perfect day; " a day to which 
the light of our " now " will be but the shining of a far-off 
Neptune. 

Young men, you are beginning the world with high aspira- 
tions, you will follow the truth, you will strive to win honor, 
you will never do a base action, you will forego ease and plea- 
sure that you may achieve a name ; that is your ambition, that 
is your desire now. Many a poor wretch to-day, worn out and 
old, bankrupt in fame, wealth, and hope, commenced life with 
as noble views and generous schemes as you ; but weakness, 
idleness, passion, dissipation have turned him away, and the 
bark that sailed out on the sunny sea with life and aspira- 
tion, now lies stranded on the shore, a broken wreck. 

How dark an annal, what a fearfully mournful sight, that 
of a man of genius, education, wit, pride, ambition, whose 
talents might have brought him an honored immortality, sink- 
ing down, down, step by step. How sad to trace the gradual 
break-down of dignhry, the mental degradation, to see the 
pride and sensitiveness of such a man, increasing with the 



476 



DOW^, DOWN, STEP BY STEP.' 



decrease of hope, fortune, and reputation, conscious of what he 
ought to be and what he might be ; with scarce a coat on his 
back or shoes on his feet, or a dinner to give him strength, 01 
a pillow to rest his head, or a lodging to afford him shelter , 
with not a friend he 
has not disappointed, 
or an enemy he has 
not irritated; a 
proud, penniless va- 
grant, attractive by [ j 
his intelle ctuality , 
yet repulsive by his 
evil conduct, pride 
in his heart, and 
penury round his 
person; an old man 
before he has ceased 
to be young, a brok- 
en-down man when 
he should be green 
and strong; falling, 
falling, falling, as 
branch after branch 
breaks under him, 
and friend after 
friend departs and 
fades in the distance ; and then dying without a friend to 
close his eyes, no one to speak to him of a Saviour, to tell him 
that for sinners like him God's immeasurable love sent the 
Redeemer to save, — tidings that might have shed glory 
round his dying bed. Does not such a record challenge and 
command our truest pity? And yet, could we lift the cur- 
tain, how many such wrecks should we discover? Yes, 




NOT A FRIEND IN THE WORLD. 



TO YOUNG MEN. 477 

young men, the future of yourselves and of your country is 
in your hands. The most loving friend you have on earth 
cannot alone make your destiny a bright one, your bitterest 
enemy can never mar its essential success if you steadfastly 
abide by the written and unwritten eternal laws. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS — LESSONS DRAWN FROM LIFE — 
HUMAN WRECKS — ILLUSTRATIVE STORIES AND FACTS. 

Death's Harvest Field — The Fatal Sliding Scale — What I Saw in a Railway 
Carriage — A Terrible Spectacle — Father, Mother, and Child Intoxi- 
cated — A Mother's Story — The Rapids at Niagara Falls — Fascination of 
Danger — A Terrible Tragedy — " Stand Back! Stand Back!"— The 
Fatal Plunge — Story of the Poor Emigrant Woman — A Mother's Love — 
"Fire! Fire!" — "Make Way There !"— Temptations of a Great 
City — An Incident of Chicago Life — Return of the Prodigal Son — A 
Scene in a London Cellar — A City Missionary's Story — Horace Greeley — 
We Visit Senator McConnell — His Wretched Appearance — Tender Re- 
gard for His Wife — A Precious Memento — "Give Up the Drink? 
Never!" — His Awful Death — A Two-bottle Man — The Old Scotch 
Bailie ! — Fire-side Thoughts — Captain Creighton and the Ship "Three 
Bells " — Terrible Suspense — Great Rejoicing. 




N speaking to the public on the 
subject of temperance I feel 
always bound to speak fairly 
and freely with regard to 
the obstacles in the way of 
the movement. I believe I 
have never in my life volun- 
teered an address to the peo- 
I never speak unless I am 
invited, and therefore only speak 
where people desire to hear me ; and 
if they come, they must expect that 
I shall utter my opinions fully and fearlessly. I do not ask 
you to believe what I say simply because I say it, for I am 
liable to error and misapprehension ; all I ask of you is to 
put what I say into the crucible and set it over the furnace, 
478 



DEATH AS A TEMPERANCE WORKER. 479 

and try it out, and if among the white ashes of error you 
find one sparkling gem of truth, that is worth something; 
take that, and let the white ashes go to the winds. 

Engaging in this work we feel that we are entering into a 
mighty moral conflict and warfare against instrumentalities 
that tend to promote and perpetuate a great evil. Death 
alone, that gaunt, grizzly reformer, would sweep drunkenness 
from the land in twenty-five years, if there were no more 
drunkards made. Of whom are drunkards made? Thank 
God, not of total abstainers. No man takes one step from 
total abstinence down to drunkenness. Every individual 
who becomes intemperate becomes so by taking the first step 
and going down the fatal sliding scale by degrees to the 
ditch. Among the generation now living there are intemper- 
ate men, horrible as it is, whom we have no expectation of 
saving ; but we look with hope to the coming generation, and 
feel that a great part of our business is to build a barrier 
between the unpolluted lip and the intoxicating cup. There- 
fore we appeal to fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, 
guardians and teachers, to help us in the work of breaking 
down the instrumentalities that tend to promote and per- 
petuate the evil of drunkenness. Chief among these instru- 
mentalities are the social drinking customs of society, — 
useless in themselves, and productive of evils, the extent of 
which we shall never know until that bright day dawns, for 
which all other days were made, when we shall see tilings as 
they are. I have been astonished to see mothers who love 
their children giving them that which may, not must, produce 
results fearful to contemplate. The mother, when she gives 
the child drink, has no idea that such results will be pro- 
duced. 

On one occasion, when riding in a railway carriage from 
Liverpool to Halifax, England, a lady, gentleman, and a little 



480 A MOTHER'S THOUGHTLESS ACT. 

child, — a beautiful boy, a lovely creature to look upon, — 
entered the compartment. By their appearance they evi- 
dently moved in genteel society. I have noticed that persons 
who carry bottles with them generally get faint at the outset 
of the journey. Soon after they entered, a bottle and rail- 
way glass were produced. I do not know how much drink 
the bottle held, but I knoAV how many glasses, for I counted, 
and there were eight. The gentleman drank one, the lady 
five, and the child two. The child, however, would not have 
had the second if it had not cried for it. The lady settled 
herself comfortably in the cushions, shut her eyes, and opened 
her mouth ; her under lip dropped as if she had not strength 
to hold it up; and though it is not polite to say that 
a lady snored, she did, and that most vigorously. But what 
of the child ? He was positively drunk. In ten minutes his 
face was marred as if a foul hand had passed over it ; the 
spirit in the wine had sent the blood through the tender 
vessels into the child's face, the eyes looked bloodshot, and, 
from being a beautiful child to look upon, he became a perfect 
nuisance, so much so that I was glad to leave the carriage. 
But who will dare to say that mother did not love her child? 
Had he been lying upon a sick-bed, she would have wound 
her loving arms around him to save him, if possible, from 
pain and anguish ; she would have spent days and nights of 
waking agony to shield the child from suffering ; yet she was 
giving him that which might produce an appetite that would 
become a master-passion, to gratify which he would barter all 
the jewels that God had given him, — jewels worth all the 
kingdoms of the earth, for "what shall a man give in ex- 
change for his soul ? " 

A lady said to me while we were riding in her carriage : 
" I wish you could get my boy to sign the pledge ; he is 
between eight and nine years of age, but he is a complete 



IERESISTIBLE IMPULSE. 481 

little winebibber. We only allow him half a glass occasion- 
ally, but he will watch for the wine, and even count the days 
to the time when he expects to have some." I suppose it 
would be outrageous for me to say that that mother was des- 
titute of natural affection, but there seems to be a perfect 
fascination in the drinking customs of society, for fathers and 
mothers do not seem willing to give up a paltry glass of wine 
or ale to save their own children. 

A party went from Buffalo to spend a week or two at 
Niagara Falls. Among them was a beautiful child; her 
golden hair hung upon her snowy shoulders ; she was the life 
of the company; she plucked flowers, twined them into 
wreaths for her own peerless brow, and presented bouquets 
to her friends. There was also there a young man just from 
college, rather conceited, yet high-spirited and noble, just the 
kind of a man who would climb the bare face of the rock and 
rob the eagle of her nest. Those of you who have visited 
Niagara Falls know that just beyond the dashing, foaming 
waters of the rapids, the river, on the American side, becomes 
almost as smooth as polished glass, eighty or one hundred 
yards before it takes its leap. Years ago it had become quite 
a fascination for people to look at that water ; lying on their 
faces they could touch it with their fingers. You have been, 
perhaps, at a railway station when an express train dashed by, 
and if you have stood on the very edge of the platform you 
may have felt an impulse almost irresistible to jump upon the 
train, — an impulse requiring nerve to resist it ; there was 
fascination, but danger, in it. Small stakes, then, were 
placed in the ground at the falls, with straps to fasten at the 
ankles of those who wished to lie down and touch the water. 

The young man laughed at the precaution. "Precau- 
tions," said he, " for timid women and silly men ; I have no 
need of them, ha, ha ! " He stood on the edge and looked 



482 A TKAGEDY AT NIAGARA FALLS. 

into the water; the ladies screamed. That only increased 
his bravado ; he laughed at them, and still kept his dangerous 
position. They cried, " Stand back, stand back ! " He turned 
and caught up the little child who was passing behind him. 
" My darling," he said, " I will hold you where no child was 
ever yet held," and he held her over the rapids. He might 
have held her there for an hour ; he was a strong man, and 
had a firm grip of the child. But she was afraid ; she saw 
the water beneath her, and grew nervous ; she gave a cry, one 
twist — and he dropped her. With a sharp cry, " God have 
mercy on me!" he leaped after her, and both went over the 
falls, and neither their bodies or a particle of their clothing 
were ever found afterward. Now, I say to you, sir, I say to 
you, madam, if you give your child drink, you are holding 
him over the rapids. You may hold him there safely, ninety- 
nine out of a hundred may hold him safely; but he may 
be more nervous than you dream of, you may not have that 
control of him you suppose you have, he may slip and go 
over, and in that case your hands are not clear of his blood. 

I know the mother would rather God would smite her 
child with any disease under the sun than that he should be a 
drunkard. It is a fearful thing for a child to be burned to 
death, but you would rather that than have him die a drunkard. 
I remember reading in a paper an account of the burning of 
Harper's establishment some years since. Half a column 
was devoted to an account of the loss of property and more 
than half a column to a circumstance connected with the fire. 

An emigrant woman had just then landed at New York with 
two children and all her property. She left them in the Mor- 
ton House, in Franklin Square, and went to Forty-third Street 
to find her sister, who had offered her a temporary home for 
herself and her children ; and, glad at heart, the woman has- 
tened back for the children and the property. Passing along, 



FIRE! FIRE! 



483 



she heard the cry of " Fire, fire ! " and the bells rang out a 
stirring peal. She paid no attention till she heard some one 
ask : " Where is the fire ? " The reply was, " In Franklin 
Square." The Morton House was there, and her children 
were in that house. To her there was only one side of that 
square, and 
only one house 
on that side. A 
fire-engine rat- 
tled through 
the streets. She 
followed it ; the 
people made 
way for it and 
closed up the 
gap again like 
waves of the 
sea, and she 
was shut out. 
Her cry was, 
"My children, 
my children ! 
Let me pass ! " 
" Stand hack, 
stand back ! " 
said the crowd. 

" I cannot, let me pass ! " A policeman came up and asked, 
" What do you want ? " " My children," she said, " are in 
the Morton House." " Every individual," said he, " in that 
house is saved, but all the property is lost. Now, take my 
hand. Make way there." And he dragged the woman through 
the crowd and brought her in front of the burning building. 
There, on a heap of broken furniture, were her two children, 




THERE 'S MOTHER/ 



484 BREAKING A MOTHER'S HEART. 

with their hands folded, and one of them called out, " There *s 
mother." That mother was a happy woman ; she had lost 
every bit of property she possessed on the face of the earth, 
but her bonny bairns were saved. 

Now, there is not a mother who would not rather see her 
child burned to death, and have its pure spirit take its flight 
into the bosom of Him who said, " Suffer little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not," than see it grow up in 
pride and manliness and become a drunkard. She had rather 
take the little bits of charred bones raked out from the ashes 
of the fire, and bury them with hope, than follow her poor, 
drunkard son to the grave with no hope in his death. Ah, I 
tell you, I have found the most comfortless creature on earth 
the mother who has buried a drunken son. 

A young man from the country, the son of a minister of 
the gospel, went to Chicago to better his condition and make 
money. He fell into dissipated habits, consorted with the low 
and vile, to his own disgrace and the sorrow and grief of his 
friends. He was a fine, handsome, noble-looking boy before 
he was stained and soiled. His mother, who loved him dearly, 
induced a gentleman to see him and plead with him to reform. 
The interview was exceedingly interesting. After a few com- 
monplace words, the question was abruptly asked, "Have 
you not a good mother ? " " Yes, as good a mother as ever 
boy had." " Do you love your mother ? " " Indeed I love 
her." " Do you know you are killing your mother, breaking 
her heart ? Hear me. Only last Sabbath your mother rose 
in church at the singing ; her book dropped from her hand, 
and she fell backward, fainting. One of your father's dea- 
cons helped her home, and the whisper went round, ' That is 
the work of her boy. Last evening she received a letter from 
a friend in Chicago, telling her that the boy she loved was 
frequenting low saloons and notoriously bad company. She 



A MOTHER'S LOYE. 



485 



slept but little last night, and, as you see, fainted in church. 
Poor woman, she is growing very pale and thin ; it is too bad.' " 
The young man cried out, " It is too bad, and I will never 
drink again." But he did, and soon grew worse. At last, sick, 
penniless, homeless, friendless, and forlorn, he determined 
to return home to his mother. Ah, that's it, young men. 

When friends are 
gone, when compan- 
ions have left you 
alone, when reputa- 
tion and means are 
gone, when health 
and strength are 
gone, then the long- 
ing comes for the 
mother. "Take me 
to my mother, 
though all the world 
turn from me, she 
will receive me and 
care for me." He went home to die, and 
the mother said, "When I look at my 
" it seems but yes- boy lying dead, it seems but yesterday 

TERDAT." 

that his father sprinkled on his forehead 
the water of baptism, and there he lies dead, and my heart is 
broken." 

Remember, drunkenness does not exist altogether among 
the lower orders of society. Some people say, "I advise you 
to go among the outcasts and talk to the people there." In 
my opinion, drunkenness has been a curse to the middle and 
the upper classes of society as much as it has been to the 
lowest. I consider a man as much a drunkard if he lies upon 
his bed of down, and rolls from it upon his magnificent car- 




486 A SCENE IN A LONDON CELLAR. 

pet in a sumptuous apartment, with mirrors all around him 
showing him his own bestiality — as much a debased, de 
graded, and imbruted sot as the man who lies in the kennel, 
his hair soaking in the filth of the gutter ; it is only the cir- 
cumstances by which he is surrounded which save him from 
the position of the other. The drunkard, in whatever station 
he may be, who stupefies his intellect, dethrones his reason, 
beclouds his mind, puts an extinguisher on the light that 
God has given him, commits as grievous a sin against God 
and his own soul as the man who wallows in the lowest 
kennel. 

A city missionary once showed me a cellar in St. Giles's, 
London. " There," he said, " I once saw a man on his death- 
bed — a heap of rotten straw — who, six years ago, hung 
pictures in the Suffolk gallery, and moved in the best circles 
of society. I asked, 'What has brought you to this?' and 
lifting up his emaciated arms and fingers like the claws of an 
unclean bird, he cried out, as his thin lips drew tight across 
his teeth and the rattle in his throat told of the approaching 
end, ' The bottle, the bottle, the accursed bottle brought me 
to this.' " And that is the story of thousands who die and 
are remembered no more. 

In Sunderland I was shown a picture painted by a person 
who was at one time an intimate acquaintance of Sir Walter 
Scott, and spent weeks with him at Abbottsford. He would 
paint pictures on tin, the heads of barrels, or on plain boards, 
and send his wife or daughters out to sell them. They re- 
ceived Is. 6c?., 2s., or 2s. 6d. for them; and those who have 
them now prize them as works of art. I have one of them in 
my library. The man died miserably, and his wife and two 
daughters became intemperate and degraded. 

A city missionary once asked me if I was to remain in 
London. I said, " I leave at two o'clock." " I am sorry for 



A CITY MISSIONARY'S STORY. 487 

that," he said, " for there is a young man I should like to 
save, and I would be glad if you could see him. He is the 
son of a minister of the gospel, well educated, speaks five 
languages fluently — a noble-hearted young man ; he has 
taught some of our first ministers elocution, and now he is 
herding with the lowest of the low, in the vilest lodging- 
houses of the city. When I picked him up, he had fallen 
from faintness arising from want of food." 

The vicar of a certain parish stood up in Cheltenham and 
said: "I was asked to visit the union* to see a poor wretch 
who had broken a bloodvessel. I found that he was the son 
of a beneficed clergyman, and that his mother was living in 
affluence. I sent word to her that her sick boy was with me, 
and she sent this reply : ' We have cast him off forever.' I 
obtained money from her sufficient to purchase an invalid's 
chair, and for three months he drew it about for his bread, 
and kept a little school at night to eke out his scanty means. 
But his appetite overcame him in temptation ; he sold his 
chair and his books, and staggered out on his way to 
Gloucester as miserable as ever." 

Drunkenness is confined to no rank or country ; it is an 
evil that permeates every class, causing misery, wretchedness, 
and woe. It is pitiful indeed to witness, and painful to 
record, the results which it produces. When that United 
States senator signed the total abstinence pledge, the news 
was telegraphed all over the United States, and there was a 
universal expression of delight. Yet, some few years after- 
wards, three gentlemen went to see him, and he said : " I 
know why you have come to see me. It is of no use. I 
have been Governor of this State for four years, and I have 
been Senator of the United States for eight years. I have sat 
at the tables of the good and the great and the gifted. Now 
Look at me. A man thrust me out of a saloon three days 
30 



488 A DRAMATIC SCENE. 

ago because I had not a dime to pay for the whiskey I had 
drunk." 

I remember very well Felix G. McConnell, of Alabama 
Horace Greeley was in Washington, and he, in company with 
another gentleman, said to me, " Will you go with us and see 
McConnell?" I said, "Yes." We went to see him. He 
sat in front of the hotel, among the usual crowd of loafers, 
his feet pushed into an old broken pair of India-rubber shoes, 
treating those who came up, and setting the negro boys 
scrambling for coppers. He had a cane in his hand, and on 
the top was engraven, — 

" Felix G. McConnell, Alabama. O God, have mercy on me." 
We entered into conversation with him. Mr. Greeley knew 
his family and alluded to his wife. Then he said, "Mr. 
Greeley, you know my wife. She is a good woman." He 
then took a dirty rag out of his pocket, unfolded it, and came 
to a piece of clean paper : he opened that and showed us a 
beautifully bound copy of the Bible. Said he: "My wife 
gave me this when I left home. She is a good woman. She 
put my name in it, as you see. I am trying to keep the book 
clean until I go home." We earnestly pleaded with him to give 
up the drink. I shall never forget how he suddenly sprang 
to his feet, and, throwing his cane on the floor with a loud 
crash, said, " Gentlemen, you ask me to give up the drink. 
Ask me to sever my right hand from the wrist, and I can do 
it ; but to give up the drink — never!" Six daj^s after that 
he cut himself all to pieces with a bowie knife, in the St. 
Charles Hotel. That was his end. 

Now we ask you, for the sake of others, to give up that 
which may be a gratification to yourself. That is the nobility 
of our enterprise ; it requires benevolence, and true benevo- 
lence always costs something. But some say, " Will nothing 
but total abstinence do ? " To use a Yankee expression, " I 



PORT-WINE LEGISLATION. 491 

guess not." What else would you have ? Shall it be occa- 
sional abstinence ? That is what every drunkard is obliged 
to come to, — he must come to that, sometimes, to save his 
life, — and, as the prison surgeons say, he is forced to adopt 
it when he gets into jail. It must be occasional or total. Sir 
William Gull says it may be more damaging to a moderate 
drinker than to a drunkard, because the one may be able to 
carry his system of daily drinking for a long time, whereas 
the other man, who was incapable of drinking so much, would 
be obliged to discontinue the practice ; and in reply to the 
question, " What would you say about our forefathers, who 
drank two or three bottles of port wine daily, till they were 
seventy or eighty years of age? " he said, "I have noticed that 
their legislation has often to be reversed." 

44 Oh," say some, "use it moderately." What is "mode- 
rately?" You cannot measure it, you cannot define it by 
quantity or quality. What is moderation to one man is death 
to another. You cannot measure moderation for anyone else 
but yourself, and even that is very doubtful ; and every man 
who becomes a drunkard becomes so in striving to measure 
moderation for himself, and going beyond the bounds when he 
was not aware of it. Some moderate drinkers would drink 
me raving mad in forty-eight hours ; some would drink me 
dead in a month. Some men are " Mighty to drink wine, and 
men of strength to mingle strong drink; " and I find the Bible 
does not pronounce a blessing on such. The words, I believe, 
are, " Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men 
of strength to mingle strong drink." 

A noble-hearted total abstainer, a wealthy man, once said 
to me : " Mr. Gough, there are some circumstances of my life 
that I would like to forget. I was what is called a bottle-and- 
a-half, or a two-bottle man. I have taken more than two bot- 
tles full at a time, and was never drunk in my life. But when 



492 CLAIMS OF POSTERITY. 

I remember the young men who started in business with me, — 
how I used to drink them drunk, and glory in it, — the vision 
will sometimes come to me of these young men as I have seen 
them, young men not as stolid as I am in their temperament, 
upon whose brain the influence of drink was fearful. I trained 
myself to do it, and I thought, forsooth, that I could train 
others. I used to say to young men, in pure friendship, not 
dreaming of harm : 4 1 see that at table you get excited, that 
your face becomes flushed ; you take too much wine, and 
that 's not gentlemanly. Don't drink your pint of wine at 
once ; begin with three glasses or four, and don't take any till 
you have eaten your fish ; don't take it too fast or too slow, 
don't mix it, and, above everything, avoid ale or beer ; and so 
by degrees you will be able to drink your bottle and a half.' 
But not one in ten could train himself. While I did it, others 
fell into drunkenness, and I feel as if I was in some degree 
responsible for it." 

I do not appeal to the selfish man, to the man who says : 
" I don't see why I should be called upon to give up my glass 
of wine because others make beasts of themselves. I can 
take care of myself, and other people must take care of them- 
selves." To such persons I have not a word to say. You 
stand there, the incarnation of a selfish principle, the very 
impersonation of pure, unadulterated selfishness. We do 
not expect you to join us in this enterprise, and if you brought 
your selfishness with you, you would do us no good. I heard 
of an old bailie, in Scotland, who opposed an improvement 
that was proposed for the benefit of the town. "I cannot 
see," he said, "that it will benefit us at all." "But," it 
was replied, " posterity will be benefited." " Posterity ! " 
said he, " posterity ! I have yet to learn that posterity 
ever did anything for us ; and I don't vote for the measure." 
Now we do not appeal to such people ; we appeal to men and 



SYMPATHY FOR OTHERS. 



493 



women with hearts to feel, and I believe we shall not appeal 

in vain. 

There is a deep-seated sympathy in the minds of most men 

for the sufferings of others, though they may not be related 

to them. Last year was prolific in shipwrecks, and when I 

have been a hundred miles 
from the seashore, and 
heard the wind whistling 




AT HOME. — FIRESIDE THOUGHTS. 



AT SEA. — TEMPEST-TOSSED. 



loudly, we have sat by the 
fireside and spoken feelingly 

of those who might be exposed to the pitiless, pelting storm ; 
and in many a household have I heard an earnest petition 
that God would have mercy on the tempest-tossed mariner, 
and I have inquired if they had any friends at sea. No, 
not a friend, relative, or acquaintance ; but they felt for 
those who had, and it was good to remember at the family altar 
those who were not akin to them, bearing them up on the 
wings of faith to Him, beseeching that He would protect 



494 AN OVERDUE STEAMER. 

them. I remember when reading of the wrecks that wero 
strewed upon the shores of Tynemouth, how deeply I was 
moved at the narrative of the noble pilots putting off in the 
lifeboat to save passengers and crew. All honor to those noble, 
true-hearted sailors. I rejoiced, too, as much as anyone, when 
New York tendered the freedom of the city to Captain Creigh- 
ton of the " Three Bells," for lying by the " San Francisco " 
night and day, when he believed the vessel would soon sink if 
something was not done to save her ; and it seemed as if I 
could walk till my feet ached to shake the noble-hearted 
captain by the hand, and thank him for what he did for suf- 
fering humanity. 

I was in the city of New York when the question was so 
often asked, "Any news of the 'Atlantic?'" and the an- 
swer, day after day, was, "No." She had been due ten, 
fifteen, eighteen clays. "Any news?" "No." Telegraphic 
despatches came from all quarters, "Any news of the 'Atlan- 
tic?'" and the word thrilled back again, sinking deep into the 
hearts of those who had friends on board, " No." Twenty days, 
twenty-one days, twenty-two days passed, and people began to 
be excited. One morning the gun's booming told that a ship 
was coming up the Narrows. People went out upon the Bat- 
tery, on Castle Garden, even on the tops of houses, to see 
and hear. It was an English ship ; the union-jack was flying ; 
they watched her till she came to her mooring at Jersey City, 
and their hearts sank within them. They sent hastily across, 
" Any news of the ' Atlantic ? '" " Has n't the ' Atlantic ' 
arrived?" "No." "She sailed fifteen days before we did, 
and we have heard nothing of her." And then people said, 
" She has gone after the ' President.' " Twenty-five, twenty- 
six, twenty-seven days passed, and those who had friends on 
board began to prepare for their mourning. Twenty-nine, 
thirty days passed, and the captain's wife was so ill that the 



SUSPENSE AND REJOICING. 495 

doctor said she would die if her suspense was not removed. 
Men began to shake their heads, and to whisper to each 
other, "A sad thing about the 'Atlantic,' isn't it?" "Yes, 
indeed, it is." 

One bright, beautiful morning, guns were heard, and a ship 
was seen coming up the Narrows ; an immense crowd was 
again collected. They looked through their spy-glasses, and 
saw again a British ship with the union-jack flying. How 
men's hearts beat as they watched the ship until she came to 
her moorings. The last hope seemed dying out when some one 
cried out, " She has passed her moorings and is steaming up 
the river." So she is. Every eye was fixed upon her ; peo- 
ple wiped the dimness from their eyes, that they might see 
more distinctly. The ship steamed up the river, and, making 
a circuit, came right up to the wharves where the people were 
assembled like clusters of bees. Then they hoisted flags ; an 
officer leaped upon the paddle-box, and put the trumpet to 
his mouth and called out : " The ' Atlantic ' is safe ; she has 
put into Cork for repairs ! " 

How the people shouted ! Ah, it was a shout from a hun- 
dred thousand throats. Men shook hands who never saw 
each other before ; tears were dashed from cheeks that were 
unused to such moisture ; bands of music paraded through 
the streets ; at night, transparencies were exhibited in front of 
the hotels, " The ' Atlantic ' is safe." The telegraphic wires 
worked all night, — thrill, thrill, thrill, u The 'Atlantic' is 
safe." Thousands upon thousands rejoiced, but not one in 
a hundred thousand had an acquaintance on board that ves- 
sel. It was the great heart of the people throbbing with 
sympathy for those who were in suffering and suspense. 
It is this sympathy that we appeal to, and we shall not 
appeal in vain. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

POWER OF EXAMPLE — LIFE IN A -GREAT CITY — STORY OF 
DRUNKEN JAKE SCENES IN MY EARLIER DAYS. 

"Don't Believe It " — Incredulous People — Street Children — Little Crea- 
tures in Tatters and Filth — The Mouth of Hell — "I've got a Terrible 
Bunch on My Side " — Fool's Pence — A Good Story — " Dip Your Scone 
in Your Own Gravy " — A Tough Audience — A Leaf from My Experience 
in Connecticut — A Marvellously Interesting Story — Thrilling Scenes — 
Bribing Drunken Jake to Disturb the Meeting — An Unexpected Result — 
A Happy Day — Personal Experience in Vermont — Another Tough 
Audience — Willing Hands and Hearts — My Proposition to Twenty-seven 
Ladies — " Hark ! There Is the Bell ! " — Remarkable Scenes — Interest- 
ing Reminiscences — My Experience in Cincinnati — P. T. Barnum and 
Jenny Lind — Mr. Barnum Offers Five Thousand Dollars for the Use of a 
Church — Why His Offer Was Declined — "Look! The Prairie Is on 
Fire !" —Faith in God. 




E often find people indisposed 
to believe statements made 
with regard to the evils of 
drunkenness. We tell them of 
the loss of life. "Don't be- 
lieve it." We tell them of 
the pauperism. " Don't believe 
it." We tell them of the lunacy. 
" Don't believe it." Lord Robert Gros- 
venor, presiding at one of my meetings 
in Exeter Hall, London, said, "As a 
visitor of one of our lunatic asylums, I unhesitatingly 
declare that two thirds of the lunacy in Great Britain is 
produced, directly or indirectly, by drunkenness." The 
managers of the idiot asylums have said, " When we come 
to give our report, people will be astonished that so much 
496 



ONE OF DEATH'S HARVEST FIELDS. 497 

idiocy is produced by drink." The children of drunken 
parents are idiotic by scores, and the public have to sustain 
them. Yet people " don't believe it." When we tell them 
of crime, — " Don't believe it ; " yet the last words of Justice 
Talfourd were that the great cause of crime in Great Britain 
is drink, and our judges tell us the same is true of our own 
country. 

A gentleman said to me not long ago in England, " A great 
fault I find with you temperance men is this; you make 
statements that facts do not bear out." A person once said 
to me, " I heard a gentleman say in the Whittington Club 
Room that forty or fifty thousand people died every year 
from drunkenness; why, it is the most absurd thing in the 
world." "Well," said I, "I do not know about that;" and 
I happened to have in my possession a small tract that was 
put into my hand at Norwich, containing extracts from 
speeches of judges and coroners respecting this evil of 
drunkenness. " Now, sir," I said, " how many people do 
you suppose die of drunkenness in the city of London every 
year?" "Oh," said he, "London is a large city, two and 
a half millions of inhabitants [this was in 1854] ; I suppose 
about a hundred or two die of drunkenness." I then read a 
statement from the coroner of Middlesex to the effect that 
from 10,000 to 12,000 die in London every year from exces- 
sive drinking, and that the coroner held inquests on from 
1,200 to 1,500 bodies of men and women every year, who 
died from drink. " Well," said he, " I could not have 
believed it." Then let men investigate. 

We occasionally hear something in the shape of an argu- 
ment. For instance, a gentleman wrote me a very long 
letter dated from one of the club-houses, in which he says 
that drunkenness is a fearful evil, and that he never saw it 
in such a light as he has seen it lately; but he says instead of 



498 



TOTAL DEPKAVITY. 



total abstinence being the remedy you must educate the 
people ; make a man respect himself, and then he will govern 
himself. Well, go and see one of those poor little wretches 
in the street who begs you to give him a penny. I have 
sometimes felt as if it was almost impossible to refuse them; 
yet we are apt to say, "What 
a parcel of miserable little 
wretches, how the city is infested 
with them." 
Now who are 
they? They 
are children, al- 
though we of- 
ten find among 
them an old 
head on young 
shoulders. And 
what a history 
is theirs, a his- 
tory fearful in 
all its pages, 
a history such 
as you dream 
nothing of. 
Little girls of 
ten, eleven, 
twelve, are 
there; one of 

them looked up in my face in the Salt Market, Glasgow, and 
pleaded " Gie me a dram." " How old are you?" " No so 
auld 's my mither." " But what do you want ? " " Gie me a 
dram, come down the close, and I '11 tell ye." 

You speak of them as miserable little children. Go home 




GIE ME A DRAM. 



FKOM THE CHURCH TO THE DRAM-SHOP. 499 

with them, and you will find that they are sent out to beg in 
the streets, to steal and to lie, in nine cases out of ten to sup- 
port the miserable and debauched husband and wife, their 
father and mother. Go into some of the lowest streets, as 
I have been, and ask that practised thief who is lounging 
at the corner of the gin-shop, who these children belong to 
that are playing near him. 

These children are educated; yes, they are. Stand with 
me at the corner of the street in a low vicinity and look 
around you. These outcasts are being educated ; wretched 
little creatures in tatters and filth, old before their time, and 
skilled in lies and deceit, trained to pilfer, educated in the 
filthiest vices. 

There was sometimes to be seen in the front of a whiskey- 
shop in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, an old gray-haired man 
with a noble brow, fiddling for half-pence, his wife every now 
and then passing round a tin cup to collect the coppers from 
the by-standers. That old gray-haired man, some years ago, 
was a minister of the gospel, and he and his wife were ac- 
customed to sit at the tables of the landed proprietors and 
gentry of the district where he was settled. What a power 
must that be which could drag a man from such a position 
to the deep damnation of habitual drunkenness ! 

Is not the following extract from " Alton Locke," quoted 
by Rev. Alexander Wallace, a true picture ? "A young man 
in London was determined to become an author and to write 
poetry. An old Aberdonian whom he consulted, and to 
whom he explained his intentions, led him out one chilly, 
foggy Saturday night, among the interminable lanes and a 
wilderness of houses, to a miserable alley, the appearance of 
which was perfectly sickening and disgusting. Stopping all 
at once before the entrance, in his own peculiarly graphic 
style, he said to his youthful companion, who wished to be 



500 THE MODEKN MOLOCH. 

an author and to write poetry, 4 Look ! There 's not a soul 
down that yard but that 's either beggar, drunkard, thief, or 
worse. Write about that ! Say how ye saw the mouth of 
hell and the twa pillars thereof, a pawn-broker's shop on one 
side and a gin-palace on the other, twa monstrous devils eating 
up men, women, and children, body and soul. Look at the 
jaws of the monsters, how they open and swallow in another 
victim, and another. Write about that. These folding doors 
of the gin-shop, are they not a more damnable, a more de- 
vouring idol than any red-hot statue of Moloch, or wicker 
Gog Magog wherein the old Britons burnt their prisoners ? 
Look at the woman pouring the gin down her baby's throat. 
Look at the prodigal boy going out of the pawn-shop, where 
he has been pledging the handkerchief he stole this morning, 
into the gin-shop. Look at that girl pawning the last skirt in 
her possession for strong drink. Write about that ! and if 
ye write, write, like Jeremiah of old, of lamentation and 
mourning and woe for the sins of the people.' " 

We talk and write about the hardships of working-men. 
I believe the working-men spend more money for beer and 
spirit than they are aware of, unless they count the cost month, 
by month and week by week. You have heard the story, prob- 
ably, of a man who signed the pledge for a year, and, at the ex- 
piration of the time, went into a dram-shop. The bar-keeper 
supposed he had come for his drink, and he began to feel by 
anticipation the poor man's coppers rattling in his pocket. 

" What will you have to drink?" he asked. 

" Nothing at all ; I don't want anything." 

" Well, but your year is up." 

" I know that, but I 've got a terrible bunch on my side." 

" Ah, I thought you would have something ; knocking off 
drink so quick won't do ; you had better have a little drop to 
begin with, — it will probably take that bunch away ; if 



WHO PAID FOR THE PIANO 



501 



you don't, you'll probably have another just like it growing 

on the other side." 

" O, you think so, do you ? Well, here is the bunch " 

[pulling out a bag containing $50] ; " you say if I drink 

something it will take it away, and if I don't I shall have 

another come just like it ? Yah ! " 

Look, then, at the cost of the thing. There is many a man 

hardly able to jingle two coppers 
together after Wednesday night 
who might not, at the close of the 
year, have a bunch in his pocket 
or by his side, that would give to 
his family a great many comforts 
and privileges they are now de- 
prived of. I remember reading a 
tract describing a carpenter com- 
ing home from his 



work with his tools 
on his shoulder, and, 
as usual, he went 
into a public-house 
to drink. He had 
the three pennies in 
his hand all ready, 
but the landlady 




I'VE GOT A TERRIBLE BUNCH ON MY SIDE. 



was talking to her neighbor, and was not ready to serve him. 
The door was open, and he heard a piano. The landlady's 
neighbor said : 

" You have a piano ?" 

" Yes," replied the landlady, " it 's a new one, it cost 
seventy guineas ; Aramantha Amelia is learning to play it, 
and we have one of the first masters in the city to teach her." 

" And you have new furniture ? " 



502 



DIP YOUK SCONE IN YOUR OWN GRAVY.' 



" Yes, we have new furniture and our apartments are 
splendidly furnished." 

" How did you get all these things ? " 
" I '11 tell you ; it 's the fools' pence that got them." 
The carpenter thought for a moment. " Fools' pence," he 
said, as he looked at the money in his hand. " There are 
three of them," and he put the money 
in his pocket ; " you '11 get no more of 
mine." Now, then, let the working- 
man give up his beer and spirits, 
and he will find at the end of the 
year an accumulation of property 
that will astonish him. 
Dr. Brown, of Dal- 
keith, tells a good story 
of a poor drunkard who 
entered a public-house 
with a " scone " — I 
think that 's what they 
call it — a " scone," a 
soft biscuit, in his jacket 
pocket; he had nothing 
else in it, his money 
had all been left at the 
bar. He sat down on 
a bench by the kitchen fire, over which the landlady was fry- 
ing bacon. When she turned her back, he dipped his "scone " 
into the gravy and munched it, and dipped and ate again and 
again. Finally the landlady caught him, called him a drunken 
lout, and thrust him to the door with the remark, " Dip your 
scone in your own gravy." He went away and thought of 
the earnings he had spent there and the misery he had brought 
upon himself, and, three months after, he passed the door, neat 




A DINNER ON THE SLY. 



A LEAF FROM MY CONNECTICUT EXPERIENCE. 503 

and smart. " Oh, how are you ? " cried the landlady, " come 
in, come in, and take a dram." " Ah, na, I 'm dipping my 
scone in my ain gravy, noo." 

These men are worth saving, and we plead with you as 
individuals to help us. I have seen the exertion and in- 
fluence of one man revolutionize a whole town. I well 
remember speaking in a certain town in Connecticut — one of 
the hardest places I ever spoke in — where the people sat and 
looked, as much as to say, " I wonder what he is going to say 
next." One might as well put one's head into a bag of 
feathers and try to make an impression upon them as to 
move that audience. A meeting was to be held at four 
o'clock, and we really did not know what to do ; so I said to 
the minister, " I am weary and disheartened, I shall do you 
no good if I stay ; I '11 go home, and you must conduct the 
meeting." He said, " What shall I do ? There 's my church, 
and there 's one grog-shop, and there 's another, one on each 
side of it, and one is kept by a member of my church, and 
it is the worst place of the two." I do not say in my ex- 
perience I have found that when a professing Christian sells 
liquor, he keeps the worst place, but I have found him the 
hardest man to deal with ; for I '11 defy any man to read in the 
Bible, " Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that 
putteth thy bottle to him and maketh him drunken, for the 
cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and 
shameful spewing shall be on thy glory, for the violence of 
Lebanon shall cover thee, because of men's blood," etc. — I 
say, I '11 defy any man to read that and then ask God to bless 
him in his business, when that business is to put the bottle to 
his neighbor's lips. 

" But," said the minister, " you go and talk to these liquor- 
sellers, and I '11 pray over it." So he went home and I went 
to the dram-shops. The first man I went to see said, " I sup< 



504 



A TOUGH LOT. 



pose you have come to ask me to give up business ; I shall 
be very glad to do so ; I have been once or twice to hear you, 
and I am pretty well convinced that it 's a miserable, mean 
business ; I '11 go and hear you this afternoon, and if I am 
entirely convinced, I will give it up and keep a temperance 
house; and if that don't keep me, I have two hands that 
will." I said to him, "You're a gentleman." The next man 
I visited looked like a turtle poking out his head every now 
and then and bob- 
bing it in again. 
Said he, " I keep 
a decent house, all 
the drunkards go 
to the other place 
to get drunk; 
it 's no use coming 
to me." So I 
went away. The 
gentleman with 
whom I stayed 
was an excellent 
man, and prayed 
for the success of 
the enterprise at 
family worship. I am always glad to find men praying for us, 
because I do not think any man will pray for the success of 
anything he does not believe to be right. But when we sat 
down to supper there was a mug of cider for each individual. 
I did not like the look of it, and I said, " Would you willingly 
put temptation in the way of a brother? I never drink cider, 
but if that was a glass of brandy and water it would be a 
a temptation to me." (I had not signed the pledge at that 
time more than a couple of years.) 




AN INEFFECTUAL APPEAL. 



SUCCESS AT LAST. 507 

I then said to him, " You can exert great influence in this 

town." Said he, " If I could only get Mr. ," (a poor, 

broken-down lawyer, who had been placed in the Post Office 
and turned away through drink, because he could not attend 
to the business properly) — "if I could only get him to sign 
the pledge, I 'd turn the best hogshead of cider I 've got into 
vinegar, and sign the pledge myself." " You profess to be a 
Christian man and you would not agree to do that unless you 
believed it to be right. We have settled the point, then, that 
it is right to sign the pledge. You say you would do so and 
so if good would result. Good will be the result ; no man 
ever denied himself for the sake of another, but good was 
the result." Said he, " I '11 think of it." At the meeting, 
the tall gray-haired man stood up and signed the pledge ; 
the next was the ex-postmaster ; then the two liquor-sellers 
came up, and almost bumped their heads over the table as 
they signed the pledge. Eighty-two came forward, and if 
they did not make a flourish with the pen, some of them 
did with the tongue. They put their names down as if 
they meant it. All agreed that we must have another 
meeting at eight o'clock. I went for some refreshments. 
Coming up the hill on my return to the hall, a man in the 
wagon in front of us stopped, stood up, cried out, " Halt, 
halt ! Look at the grog-shops closed at sun-down. Thirty- 
five years I 've lived in this town and I never saw a sight 
like that. I've seen drunkards go in at one door as a 
funeral started from the other. Three cheers for cold water." 
We gave the cheers, and the ex-dramsellers came out and 
helped us. At the meeting, all went on well. 

There was a class of young men in the town who looked 

with a great deal of contempt on every moral movement. 

You will find such young men everywhere. They have no 

contempt for a horse-race or prize-fight, for the new fashion 

81 



508 



MAKING A CAT'S PAW OF DRUNKEN JAKE. 



of a coat, or hat, or pair of boots, and there is a large amount 
of intellectual power often wasted by them in the appreciation 
and description of this sort of thing. Some of them give 
their whole mind, or what they call their mind, to the ar- 
rangement of a necktie or the cultivation of their whiskers. 
However, the young gentlemen in this town who thought a 




DEOTKEN JAKE. 



moral movement so much beneath them did not hesitate to In- 
duce a poor drunkard to come and disturb the meeting. After 
I had delivered my speech, which was to the intemperate, 
the poor drunkard stood up, and I have seldom heard such a 
speech as he made. The young men were looking on, expect- 
ing to see the sport, and were rubbing their hands with great 
glee. He said : " Look here, I 've got a bottle of liquor in 
my pocket and they have given me half a dollar, thaUs, they 



BURNING THE MONKEYS' FINGERS. 509 

said they would — them 's the fellows up there " [pointing to 
them] ; " they gave me a bottle of liquor and said they would 
give me half a dollar if I would come to this meeting, and 
every now and then pull out the cork, and say, 4 Mr. Gough, 
here 's your very good health.' Young men, you may keep 
your money ; I shan't do it." He went out, and we heard a 
bottle smash on the steps. Then he came in and said to the 
audience, " I have been called Drunken Jake long enough, I 
have had my hat knocked over my eyes often enough ; Mr. 
Gough has told me I am a man, and I believe I am ; I have 
not acted like one, but I '11 sign the pledge, see if I don't." 
His hand shook and he could not do it. " I will, see if I 
don't." At last he succeeded in scrawling his name ; it 
looked just as if he had taken a fly and dipped it in ink 
and set it to run across the paper, but it was his name, and 
it is there to this day. 

I went to that town some time afterwards to attend a 
temperance celebration; the governor of the State made 
a speech on the occasion, and the first words he uttered were 
these : — " Ladies and gentlemen, I was invited to attend a 
military review to be held at Norwich to-day ; I said I would 
be there if nothing special should intervene, but a temperance 
celebration in my native town is something so special that I 
am with you to-day." The ex-postmaster was in the chair. 
Children and wives of reformed drunkards were there. The 
children sung, " Away, away the bowl," and unfurled a ban- 
ner on which was inscribed, " All is right now father is 
sober." It was a happy day. One woman shook hands with 
me and said, " Mr. Gough, when you were here last, I felt 
that if my husband would only keep sober and take care of 
the children, I should be perfectly willing to die, but I never 
wanted to live so much as I do now." The husband wished 
me to go home with him. I went. " There," said he, " is my 



510 A HARD TOWN IN VERMONT. 

wife. When you were here last she was with her friends. 
There 's a girl " [showing me his daughter] " who was out at 
service. There are two children who were in the almshouse, 
and I was a miserable hanger-on at the saloons. My children 
are now at home ; I have too much pride, with cold water, 
to let the town take care of them." I believe the influence 
of that one man, now in heaven, will be felt to all eternity. 

I remember speaking two or three evenings in a town in 
Vermont, to a very hard audience. There was no making 
any impression upon them. If anything was said calculated 
to make them smile, and one person began to titter, every- 
body looked at him, and he held down his head as if he 
were ashamed. It was a strange audience. I said to them, 
on the second night : " Gentlemen, I know by your looks 
that you will do nothing, I know you do not intend to 
do anything ; you have come here with sneers on your faces, 
and armed against me ; it would take three nights to address 
you, to get through that armor and reach your hearts. There 
are some ladies here, however, who can do something if they 
will, and if they say they will, I know they will. It is to 
them that I appeal." I was entertained at a house in the 
town, and the next day twenty-seven ladies came to see me. 
I assure you I was somewhat startled, for I had not been 
used to meeting such a committee, and although I have been 
before the public for the last forty years I still have a feeling 
of diffidence that I shall never overcome. So when these 
twenty-seven ladies came in, if they had said nothing to me I 
think they might have been there till now and I should have 
said nothing to them. " Well, Mr. Gough," they said, " you 
told us last night to do something ; if you will tell us what we 
can do, we are willing to do it." " Well," I said, "it's rather 
a strange position to place me in to tell you what you can do. 
Have you a society of children here, a cold-water army?" 



ENLISTING THE LADIES. 



511 



" No, we have not." « Then," said I, « there are enough of 
you to canvass this whole town and get every child, with its 
parent's consent — not without — to adopt the principle of 
total abstinence. Get every child to sign the pledge ; go to 




A SUDDEN INVASION. 

the ministers' houses, to drunkards' houses, to abstainers- 
houses, go everywhere. Get every child you can to sign the 
pledge. I shall leave town after to-night's meeting, but will 
return on Saturday. If you get the children, and it is fine 
weather, we can go into the grove and sing and talk with the 
children, and I believe good will be done." Thev said thev 



512 A CLEVER DODGE. 

would do so and I felt satisfied that the thing would be a 
success. 

That night we went to the place of meeting, a large room 
up two flights of stairs, — for the place of worship, usually 
granted to us in every village in those days, had, in this 
instance, been denied us. Some one, however, said, "Hark, 
there is the bell ringing," and sure enough it was. The bell 
of the church was ringing, and such a ringing I never before 
heard. It appeared that the husband of one of the ladies 
had one of the keys of the church, and she obtained it and 
opened the door, and rang the bell as well as she could, think- 
ing that when we were once inside they would not turn us 
out. And they did not. The church was not lighted, but 
the ladies procured some candles, so that we had light enough 
to talk by. Now, I do not suppose this could happen in every 
town. This happened in a country village, where it could 
be done with perfect propriety, while in the city it might be 
an absurdity. But I am only showing what the ladies can 
do if they please. The next Saturday a band of music was 
heard in the streets ; not a very good band, it is true ; but 
they mustered as many instruments as they could to make a 
noise, and marched up the streets with a large banner, on 
which was inscribed : — 



'THE LADIES OF B- 



TEETOTAL, OR NO HUSBAND. 
RELIGION OUR SAFEGUARD, 

TEMPERANCE OUR SHIELD." 

And they marched up with three hundred and six chil- 
dren into the grove. Several ministers were there, and 
spoke in behalf of the enterprise. 

The procession then came down the streets again, and hap- 
pened to pass by some young men who were in front of one 



SOME ASTONISHED YOUNG MEN. 



513 



of the taverns, young men of good families, who had 
nothing to do but to smoke cigars and puff the smoke in 
spiral wreaths around their hats. One of them said: "Listen ! 
There is some music in the street." "Yes," said another, 
"they have been mustering a parcel of women and children, 
and call it a teetotal army;" and they pooh-poohed and 
sneered, as a great many persons do who know but little about 
our movement. At last one of them said : " Holloa ! What 

is that? 'The ladies of B , teetotal, or no husband.' 

Well, that 's a good 'un ! " and the young men laughed and 
chuckled, and were very merry over it, and thought it a very 




IN FRONT OF THE TAVERN. 



absurd thing. But by and by one of the young gentlemen 
heard that there was a certain Miss So-and-so in the proces- 
sion. He looked, and, sure enough, there she was. At once 
he began to arrange his dress ; put his cigar behind him, 
buttoned up his coat, and looked very demure. Now, that 
town was one of the most drunken towns in the State ; the 
young men were going to destruction by scores; they were 
growing in wickedness and dissipation; but before the sun 
went down that night fifty-nine young men had signed the 
pledge. That was in 1844, and the results are felt to this day. 
Some have said : All this tends to scepticism and ignor- 
ing the power of God's grace, and impairs the influence of the 
church. Ours is not a sectarian movement. It never has 
been made so ; it is a Christian enterprise. I remember 



514 MY EXPERIENCE IN CINCINNATI. 

when we were about to hold a series of twenty-eight meetings 
in Cincinnati. Mr. Barnum was there at that time with Jenny 
Lind. She had sung in some of the places of worship, and 
it was not thought improper. She was a lady, and a Chris- 
tian. They paid pretty high prices for the use of churches, 
and these were generally granted, — I do not say for that 
reason. The Wesley chapel was the largest building in the 
city (I have seen more than five thousand children in it at 
one time), and Mr. Barnum proposed to give five thousand 
dollars for it for five nights. A meeting of the trustees was 
held, and some of them said: "We are in debt, and should 
really like the money, and Miss Lind has sung in churches 
at other places." One of the trustees said: "Do you know 
that the temperance friends are about to apply for it to hold 
twelve meetings, and they are to be here at the same time 
that Mr. Barnum wishes to have the place for Jenny Lind?" 
" Then that settles the matter at once," said the trustees, 
" Mr. Barnum cannot have it ; we will open the place for the 
temperance friends, and sweep and light and garnish it, and 
let them have it free." And we did have it free, and the 
trustees gave up the five thousand dollars for the concerts. 
Was any injury done to the cause of religion there ? No ; 
we held those twenty-eight meetings in the city, twelve of 
them at Wesley chapel. One was a prayer meeting, and I 
never was at such a prayer meeting before or since. There 
were more than a thousand persons present. An Episcopal 
clergyman sat in the pulpit as president, and I remember Dr. 
Beecher, Mrs. Stowe's father, asked me to say a few words. 
I spoke for just ten minutes, and when I went down from 
the pulpit he grasped my hand. I saw tears running down 
his cheeks as he said: "God Almighty bless you." There 
were ministers of all denominations there. There was a 
large meeting of Methodist ministers elsewhere, and only 



FAITH AND WORK. 515 

two or three of them could come, but they sent letters of 
sympathy with the movement. Did that, think you, injure 
the cause of religion ? 

There was once a great State temperance convention held 
in Worcester, Massachusetts, and it happened to be appointed 
on two days when the convention of Congregational minis- 
ters of New England met at Lowell. In the midst of their 
deliberations it was announced that a deputation from the 
Congregational convention had come to offer sympathy with 
them in their work. The whole convention rose to receive 
them. The venerable Dr. Hitchcock, President of Amherst 
College, was spokesman. Two doctors of divinity came 
with him, carrying with them the full sympathy and hearty 
prayers of the convention held a hundred miles distant. 
Did that injure the cause of religion? Let the religious 
men in this country identify themselves with this movement, 
and they would soon sift out every particle of infidelity 
from it. 

I believe this enterprise is to be successful, because it is 
God's work and not man's. He uses human instruments as 
he sees fit. The temperance cause must be borne upon the 
shoulders of God's people and God's ministers, as was the 
ark of old, or it never will go forward. 

Think what a glorious reformer Nehemiah was. You 
remember when he heard of the children of Israel being in 
distress, he desired to help them, and, in his beautiful, sub- 
lime, and touching autobiography, he does not tell us, " So I 
went in to ask the king's permission ; " no, " I prayed in my 
heart, and said unto the king ; " and that is the way he 
worked. He prayed while he worked. When they came out 
against him, he did not say : " So we set a watch and kept 
them off." No, but he said: "We made our prayer unto 
God and set a watch." There it was again; working and 



516 FIGHTING A PRAIRIE FIRE. 

praying, neglecting neither the work nor the prayer, but 
working and praying, with weapons of war in one hand and 
implements of labor in the other. Let us work and pray, 
and watch in faith that the day of victory may speedily 
dawn. 

Faith in what? All our instrumentalities are very feeble 
in themselves. I remember reading of a missionary party 
who were crossing a prairie to reach their destination. Often 
in September, before the State was fully settled, fearful fires 
occurred on the prairies, and it was almost impossible to 
escape. When a party discovered a fire, they saved them- 
selves by pulling up the grass in a circle, and setting it on 
fire around them, and that carried the flames away and they 
were thus saved. One of the party in question cried out, 
" Look ! Look ! The prairie is on fire ! " There was a ruddy 
glare in the sky, and the flames were approaching rapidly. 
The cry arose, " The prairie is on fire ! We are lost, we 
are lost. The flames travel twenty miles an hour. We shall 
be burned and nothing will be left of us but blackened 
corpses or charred bones." The wife clung to her husband, 
the mother to her child, and they stood in mute despair. 
An old trapper said, "We must fight fire with fire. Let 
every man, woman, and child work. Pull up the grass in a 
circle ; larger yet, larger yet ! Work for your lives ! Already 
I feel the first flush of heat. Now bring the matches." 
There were but two. They took one and struck it. It 
failed. They had but one left, only one match, a feeble 
instrumentality. They felt that it was the last earthly hope. 
The missionary, baring his brow and holding that feeble 
agent in his fingers, said, " God help us for His own name's 
sake. Help us. If it be thy will, help us." And they all 
said, as their hearts prompted, "Amen." They kneeled, 
praying, the fire within half an hour of them. They prayed, 



THE EFFICACY OF FAITH. 



517 



they believed, they struck the match, it caught fire, the grass 
was ignited. Away it went from them in a circle, and the 
little band escaped. Brethren, we are fighting fire with fire. 




"look! look! the prairie is on fire!" 

Our instruments are as feeble as that single match. When 
we put forth our agencies, let us say, " God help us ; " and 
by and by we shall be standing in the circle while the fire 
rages harmlessly around us ; we and those who ma} r be saved 
by our instrumentality. May God grant it, for His own 
name's sake. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE GREAT CONFLICT IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND — THE 
DESTROYER'S MARCH — PERSONAL WORK AND EXPERIENCES. 



The Temperance Cause in England — Mr. Spurgeon's Opinion — Alarming 
Increase of Dram-shops — London — Different Classes of Society — Grave 
Apprehensions for the Future — The Tide of Evil — Drinking Among 
Women — Fighting the Demon of Intemperance — My Labors in Eng- 
land — The Hardest Work of Thirty Years — Powerful Champions — 
Hoxton Hall — Its Former Yile Reputation — Touching Scenes — Imi- 
tating Jerry McAuley's Mission — Work Among the Ragged and 
Wretched — Rational Enjoyment for the Homeless — Edinburgh — A 
Total Abstinence Club-room — A Drunken Teetotaler — Seeking Safety — 
Testimony of Eminent Physicians — A Remarkable Incident — Recollec- 
tions of the Past — A Leaf from My Own Experience — An Awful 
Struggle — Rev. C. H. Spurgeon — How I Became Acquainted with 
Him — Mrs. Spurgeon — A Noble Woman — Disobeying the Doctor — 
Mr. Spurgeon's Substitute for Beer. 



OMPARING the temperance 
cause in Great Britain with 
what it was twenty-five years 
ago, I found an immense in- 
crease of drunkenness among 
a certain class. I do not mean 
to say that this is true of all 
the working classes, but a certain 
portion of what are called the lower 
orders of society in England are 
more besotted and brutalized by 
drunkenness than they were twenty-five years ago. Mr. 
Spurgeon said to me, " There is a certain class of working- 
men in this country that is becoming stolid, soaked, and bru- 
talized by drunkenness." And this fact has roused the 
community from one end of the kingdom to the other, to do 

51 S 




INCREASE OF DRINKING AMONG WOMEN. 519 

something against this terrible curse of Great Britain. But 
it is perfectly frightful to witness the number of places 
where drink is sold. I never saw anything to be compared 
with it on this side of the water. There is one thing, how- 
ever, that should be remembered, and that is, London has a 
population of four millions — larger than all New England, 
and the area of England itself is not much larger than the 
State of Maine; so that what exists of evil is seen, as it 
were, at a glance. Then there are two classes, or two worlds; 
one lives out-doors, and the other in-doors. All the degrada- 
tion, sin, poverty, and wretchedness of a certain class is 
exposed to view, and, seeing it at a glance, it appears all the 
more terrible to us. 

Samuel Morley, a member of Parliament, said at a meet- 
ing of mine, " I have grave apprehension for the future 
of this country unless something is done to stem this terrible 
tide of evil." This increase is among a certain portion of 
the working classes of England, and I will not dilate further 
upon them. When we come to the middling classes, — 
the bone and sinew of any nation, physically, intellectually, 
morally, and spiritually, — we find an immense improvement. 
There is very much less drinking, except, I am sorry to say, 
among a certain class of women. There it is increasing 
quietly, but surely. I never heard, I am sure, of so much 
drinking among women ; and when I speak of women, I 
mean a respectable class of women. This increase of drunk- 
enness among them is owing to the " grocer's license," 
which is a license permitting grocers to sell liquor on the 
premises, and in small quantities, to be taken away. 

But an immense amount of work is done in England in 
promoting temperance. It is glorious to go there and engage 
in such work. When I saw the evil, and the energy dis- 
played by the various organizations at work to remove it, I 



520 INFLUENTIAL CO-WORKERS. 

should have been ashamed to come back to America had I 
not been willing to throw myself into this conflict and work 
as I never worked in my life before ; for at this time I did the 
hardest work of thirty years. The Church of England Tem- 
perance Society now numbers fourteen thousand clergymen 
of the Church of England. " We have one of the first theolo- 
gians," some one said, " in Christendom," — such a man as 
Dr. Lightfoot, the Bishop of Durham. The Dean of Durham 
presided at a meeting of mine held in Newcastle, and he 
made the most wonderful speech I think I ever heard. He 
said, " I want Mr. Gough to tell the American people that 
the Bishop of Durham goes up and down this great diocese 
preaching total abstinence with the gospel." The Bishop of 
Bedford said, "I am going to my diocese in Whitechapel, 
and I go there as a total abstainer." It is a new diocese, and 
he has just been appointed bishop. Canon Duckworth, who 
went with his Royal Highness to India, was exceedingly cor- 
dial to me, and was good enough to say at the meeting in 
Westminster Gardens that he adopted the principle of total 
abstinence from hearing me speak twenty years before. 

Not only in the Church of England, but in all the Non- 
conformist bodies, ministers of the gospel are preaching on 
temperance. I speak of the Church of England because it 
is so extraordinarily marked. Westminster Abbey, for in- 
stance, is open once or twice every year for a temperance ser- 
mon, and Dean Stanley granted the use of it with all his 
heart. I could speak of other classes of people, members of 
Parliament and other influential men, who are exerting a good 
influence in behalf of our movement. And those men who 
are not fully in sympathy with the movement are speaking of 
it respectfully and helping it along by their influence, and we 
should be very glad to get their example as well. 

One evening, in London, I accompanied my friend, Dr. 



THE HOXTON HALL MISSION. 521 

William M. Taylor, to a meeting in Hoxton Hall. Mr. Noble, 
the leader of the meeting, said, " We will now sing a hymn." 
The hymn was, — 

" The mistakes of my life have been many, 
The sins of my heart have been more, 
But with eyes streaming with tears 
I am knocking at mercy's door." 

Many of the audience were ragged and many of them were 
very poor, and the sight of them — numbering between twelve 
and fifteen hundred — was not particularly encouraging. Yet 
those meetings have been kept up regularly night after night 
without intermission, and three times on Sunday, until nearly 
six hundred successive meetings have been held for these poor 
creatures in Hoxton Hall. This is a new branch of work, 
and rich men aid it. Hoxton Hall was a horrible place, so 
bad that its license was taken away. When Mr. Noble was 
in this country he went down to see Jerry McAuley's Mission, 
and while there he said, "I will go back and start such 
a mission as this in London." Jerry McAuley's Mission is the 
father, we might say, of the great mission work in Hoxton 
Hall. The night Dr. Taylor was there with me, Mr. Noble 
said, " Let us sing our favorite hymn, — 

' When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of Glory died,' " 

and they sang it with a will ; and during the two minutes of 
silent prayer that followed you could hear their breathing. 
The leader said, " When you have got a pair of boots and a 
good suit of clothes on, join this and that church ; we only 
want the ragged and wretched." They have received over 
twelve thousand pledges in that hall. The lease of it ran out, 
and the question was asked, " What will it cost to renew the 
lease ? " " We want three thousand pounds," was the reply, 
and the money was furnished. 



522 



A DRUNKEN TEETOTALER. 



In Edinburgh there is a total abstinence club-room, and so 
there is in many other places. The rooms are lighted and 
comfortably heated, and furnished with tables, newspapers, 
pictures, dominoes, chess, checkers, and perhaps a baga- 
telle board, and here men spend their evenings. You say, 
" Men ought to spend their evenings at home." There are 
many young men in New York who have only a cold garret 
to go to, and that is no place to sit all alone, or with a com- 




don't put me out, I'M a tee- 
totaler." 



panion that is 
not congenial. 
They want places where they 
can enjoy themselves in good, 
rational recreation. I be- 
lieve our rich men could 
spend their money to good advantage in providing such 
places for the encouragement and help of young men. A 
drunken man came into this club-room in Edinburgh. 
He was so drunk that he could hardly stand. Some 
one said, " Do you know what place this is ? " " Yes, it 
is a teetotal club-room." " But you are drunk." " I know 
I am drunk ; I am a drunk teetotaler. Did you never see a 
drunk teetotaler before ? Here is one ; I am drunk." " You 
had better go out of here," " No, no, don't put me out ; I 'm 
a teetotaler, here is my pledge " [taking it out of his pocket]. 



CATCHING THE PEOPLE WITH GUILE. 523 

"I signed the pledge an hour ago, and, so help me God, I 
have n't drank a drop since. I have come in here for safety." 
His poor brain was bewildered with drink, and he wanted a 
place of safety. Where did he go ? Why, to a teetotal club- 
room, where there was warmth, and light, and comfort, and 
kind friends to help him, and that man is now one of the 
most active members of the Total Abstinence Society. 

There is one point I suppose I ought to touch upon, and 
that is the medical question. That branch of the subject is 
receiving great attention in England, and it is encouraging to 
see such men as Sir Henry Thompson, Sir William Gull, and 
last, but not least, Dr. Richardson, working in the temperance 
cause ; and, if you remember, these men came in gradually. 
When Dr. Richardson delivered his first lecture he made a 
a special arrangement that it should not be under total absti- 
nence agency or patronage. Those in charge of the lectures 
had to catch the people with guile, and they were called the 
Cantor Lectures. They became so popular, and Dr. Richard- 
son pursued his investigations so closely, that he has come out 
a thorough total abstainer. I know there are doctors who 
take the other side, and it is a great controversy ; but we like 
controversy, we like battle. It was grand to fight there, be- 
cause we felt we had something to fight for. We were not 
beating the air ; we were not fighting sympathy, which is in- 
tangible and so heavy a burden that it presses one down to 
the ground. I would rather have strong opposition, and there 
we had it. I told them I was not a medical man or a physi- 
ologist, and therefore I was glad to see men attend to that 
portion of our work who understood it. 

There are some who oppose the temperance movement, and 

the most absurd things have been written and published with 

regard to the use of alcohol. I think it is Dr. Moxon — I am 

not quite sure — who says there cannot be such a thing as 

32 



524 SUFFERING FOR A PRINCIPLE. 

reforming a drunkard. I hope Dr. Moxon will go to heaven, 
and when he gets there he will find men who have fought 
their appetite and washed their robes and made them white 
in the blood of the Lamb. Total abstinence has been to them 
a means of grace. This doctor says : "A splendid fellow, a 
teetotaler, came to me for professional treatment. I advised 
him to take stimulants ; he refused. I told him he was a 
fanatic, and he died. I will never forgive the teetotalers for 
the loss of that noble man." What rubbish for a medical man 
to utter and publish ! Sir William Gull says : " A splendid- 
looking fellow came under my care, a brewer's drayman. I 
did my best to save him, but he died. His body swelled to 
such an extent that I punctured it ; the gas came out, and I 
had several lights burning on that man's body." * It would be 
just as consistent to say, " I will never forgive the brewers for 
the death of that noble man," as for another to say he would 
not forgive teetotalers for the death of " that noble man." 

Fanatic ! If total abstinence is to be a principle, if I hate 
the drink, am I not bound by my principle to suffer pain, even 
if I know the drink will relieve me from it ? I can trust to 
God to relieve me in his own good way. To those men who 
would reform, we say, " You should be willing to suffer for a 
principle." Take a man that has been a drunkard for ten or 
twenty years, saturated with drink. He puts his name on the 
temperance pledge to-night. You say it will be a good thing 
for him if he only keeps it. There is the point. Than man 
can keep the pledge very well until the next morning, but 
when the next morning comes, what then ? The suffering ! 
He is weak, — physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually 
weak ; he cannot hold his hands steady ; he has no power over 
his nerves ; he is suffering from the horrible shivers and the 
terrible sensations of delirium tremens. 



* This incident is taken from Sir William Gull's testimony before the com- 
mittee of the House of Lords, and is told in full on page 196. 



MY OWN EXPERIENCE. 



525 



Now here is this man in his weakness, longing for drink as 
he never longed for anything upon earth or in heaven. Here 
comes the temptation. Now that man knows that if he takes 
a glass of brandy it will set him up, he knows that he will 




obtain relief if he takes it. Would you advise him to take it 
if it would relieve him of that suffering? All the pangs of 
neuralgia, rheumatism, and cramps that I ever felt are nothing 
to what I suffered the last Tuesday night of October, 1842, 
when I stood face to face with the giant that held me by one 



526 ^ R - A:NT) mrs - spurgeon. 

finger for years. Ought a man to violate his principle for a 
little touch of neuralgia ? 

Let us stand by the principle of total abstinence, and 
laugh to scorn those who say that it is good for us to take 
intoxicating liquor as a medicine. A man belonging to the 
Hoxton Hall Blue-ribbon Army, who had been a drunkard, 
was taken ill, and the doctor said, "Total abstinence won't 
suit you, you must take a little ale." " How much, doctor? " 
" You must take half a pint of stout with your dinner, and 
half a pint of beer before you go to bed." "Is that all?" 
inquired the man. " Yes," said the doctor. " Well, doctor," 
said he, " if I take half a pint of stout for my dinner, four 
quarts won't satisfy me, and I shall drink until I am mad." 
He replied, " Then you had better not take it at all." I hold 
with a great many good men in England, that intoxicating 
liquor is not necessary even as a medicine ; in some cases the 
doctors have done the cause of temperance harm. 

There was another pleasant circumstance connected with 
my stay in England, and that was the acquaintance which I 
made with Mr. Spurgeon. I had never met him ; for, although 
I had spoken in his tabernacle three times, I had never seen 
him. Twice he was away at Mentone, suffering from his 
sad disease, rheumatic gout, and on another occasion he 
was called away, and could not be at the meeting. I met his 
brother, and said, "I am determined to see your brother 
Charles, and I will see him." Mr. Spurgeon very kindly 
wrote, " You wish to see me not more than I wish to see you." 
I went to his house, and he captured me. I fell in love with 
him at first sight, and I believe my wife fell in love with his 
wife. He is a wonderful man, and his wife is a remarkable 
woman. In " Sunlight and Shadow " I have given in detail 
an account of a visit to his orphanages. 

I wish to say here that Mr. Spurgeon is a thorough total 



A BKAVE LITTLE WOMAN. 527 

abstainer. His wife, too, is a pronounced total abstainer. 
She has not been out of her house, except when taken out in 
a chair, for twelve years. She has some internal disease that 
is exceedingly painful, so that about one day in three she is 
confined to her bed, and can see no one. Mr. Spurgeon said 
to me : " My wife is a brave little woman. She said to me, 
when she was taking wine and ale by the doctor's prescription, 
eight years ago, 4 Charles, did you ever know of a lady becom- 
ing a drunkard ? ' 4 Yes, my dear.' 4 Did you ever hear of a 
lady in my position becoming a drunkard?' 4 Yes, my dear, 
I have.' Then she said, ' You will never hear that of me, for 
I will never touch another drop.' ' But, my dear, you must ; 
the doctor will oblige you to do it.' ' No, the doctor will not 
oblige me to do it, for I will never taste it ; it shall never pass 
my lips again.' From that time till this, in all her sufferings 
and spasms, she has never used intoxicating liquor." Mr. 
Spurgeon says that she is very slowly getting a little better. 
He said to me that a certain physician prescribed for her, and 
said that she must learn to be an opium-eater if she would be 
relieved from her pain. " That doctor,'' said Mr. Spurgeon, 
44 has been dead for several years, and my wife is living yet." 
I wish to say that Mr. Spurgeon has not been a total ab- 
stainer for a great length of time. He said to me : 44 My 
constitution is such that I need, and must have, bitter. I am 
very fond of bitter beer ; I enjoyed it and drank it freely. 
But now I have substituted something that is bitter without 
a particle of intoxicating spirit in it, and that I use." He 
asked me to taste it, and I did. It was very bitter, but there 
was no alcohol in it. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



POWER OF WOMAN'S INFLUENCE — SOCIAL CUSTOMS THAT 
LEAD TO RUIN — MEMORABLE INCIDENTS IN MY CAREER. 

Woman's Power and Influence — A True Incident — How Joe Was Induced 
to Sign the Pledge — One Year Afterwards — A Romantic Story — An 
Intemperate Lover — A Romance from Real Life — A Telling Crusade 
Against a Dram-shop — A Well-Planned Campaign — An Astonished 
Rumseller — " Worse Than it Was Yesterday " — Deciding Who Was the 
Head of the House — A Memorable Incident in My Career — Twenty 
Years After — Young Girls Who Drink — The Downward Path — A 
Lover Tempted by His Affianced — The Shaft of Ridicule — The Fall — 
Tempter and Tempted — Found Dead — Social Customs That Lead to 
Ruin — Unwelcome Guests — Incidents of My Work in Cincinnati — A 
Shower of One Hundred and Forty-three Autograph Albums — Writing 
the Pledge in Each One — What Followed — A Flood of Eight Hun- 
dred Albums — Story of the Colored Preacher — Jumping Through a 
Wall. 

HAVE a strong belief in the 
rights of woman, though I 
may not be what in the or 
dinary phrase is styled "s 
woman's rights man." In tho 
Bible account of her creation, 
which will forever be unap- 
proachable in its simple, yet exalted, 
beauty, we find that the beasts were 
made out of the ground, man was 
formed of the dust, but woman was 
"builded" (as the margin has it) afterwards and of different 
material. She was to be a " helpmeet " for man, his equal, 
and the recipient of his heart, mind, and affections ; and at 
her creation she was " brought " to her husband. Adam was 
no savage at his creation. He had the tastes, the knowledge, 

528 




A MIGHTY POWER FOR GOOD OR EVIL. 529 

and occupations of what we call a high state of civilization, 
and woman was brought to him, his equal companion. He 
did not buy her, she was no slave, but equal, a help "not 
good" to be without. Adam's first employment was horti- 
culture. His first son was a farmer, his second a shepherd, 
and Cain built a city — none of which are the doings of sav- 
ages. The fifth in descent from Cain had a wonderful family 
in several respects; in forms of tent life, in the care of 
cattle, making musical instruments, in work in metals; and 
woman was the companion in all this. She was made with a 
more delicate organization and capacity, but of equal import- 
ance and equal responsibility. Adam and Eve were both 
called to account for disobedience ; though the punishment 
was equally severe, it was different in kind. If our day had 
been the day of creation, woman would not have been required 
to fight Indians, to train with the militia, to run with the 
fire-engine, to climb the building-ladder, or work the ship in 
storms. But who shall say that woman's work in connection 
with the facts of our life is not equal to man's work ? What 
is she doing for the Indians? Could her work in the com- 
mon cause have been spared in our late war? Now what 
does this necessarily imply? Why, equal responsibility, of 
course, and there is no power that can be exercised by man, 
stronger or more important than her influence. 

The wife has an influence to exert, and it is a most astound- 
ing thing to me that so many ladies look askance at the sub- 
ject of temperance. What is there undignified in doing 
away with a miserable, paltry custom ? It is time-honored 
and old-fashioned, certainly. What mighty power a woman 
has for good or for evil ; a word of sympathy from her lips 
goes a great way. Many and many a man has been saved by 
waking to the consciousness that some tender-hearted, pure 
woman felt some sympathy for him and some interest in him, 



530 HOW JOE WAS SAVED. 

though he was debased and degraded. I remember a circum- 
stance that occurred after one of my lectures in a small town, 
while the people were signing the pledge. Several ladies had 
been watching the proceedings with considerable interest, and 
one of them said to me, " Mr. Gough, I wish you would go 
out to the door and get Joe to sign the pledge." I did not 
know Joe from Jehoshaphat, but I went outside, and there, 
leaning against the post was a poor, miserable-looking fellow 
that I thought must be Joe. So I said, — 

" How do you do, Joe ? " 

" The boys have been pelting me with stones." 

" They don't pelt you with stones when you are sober, do 
they?" 
, " No, I don't know as they do." 

"Joe," I said, "you are serving a hard master. I have 
served him myself. You are receiving his wages, and I will 
tell you that you would be much better off if you were to do 
his work without any wages at all, for his wages are worse 
than his work; but you need not serve him any longer; do 
as I and hundreds of others have done, become a sober man, 
and then the boys won't pelt you. Come and sign the 
pledge." 

" I have not got a friend in the world." 

" I know what that is, Joe ; for five years of my life I was 
in that condition ; but if you sign the pledge, there are 
hundreds of honest men and women who will be friends to 
you. Some of the ladies inside sent me to you and asked 
me to come out and get you to sign." 

"Did they, though?" 

" Yes, they did." 

"Did they, really?" 

"Yes," I said; "come along, and you'll see." 

He went with me, and we offered him the pledge, and he 



A MAKKED CHANGE FOR THE BETTER. 



531 



tried to sign it, but his fingers went in every direction ; he 
positively could not hold the pen. I wrote his name, and he 
made a mark, and I held his hand while he did it. Several 




JOE. 

ladies then came and shook 

hands with him. He looked 

<as if he had never shaken 

hands with a lady before in 

his life, and he went out of 

the hall a better man than he came in. A year afterwards 

I met Joe in the street. It was the fashion then to wear a 

blue coat with brass buttons, and he had one on. His hat 

was neatly brushed, his trousers were strapped neatly down 



ONE YEAR AFTERWARDS. 



532 POWER OF WOMAN'S SYMPATHY. 

over boots more highly polished than mine generally are * he 
looked quite the gentleman, and had a lady on his arm. I 
said to him : — 

" Why, Joe, is that you ? " 

"Yes," said he, "that's me." 

" You 're getting on finely, Joe, are n't you ? How do 
you do ? " 

" Yes," said he, " I am getting along pretty well." 

"You've stuck to your pledge, haven't you?" 

" Yes," said he, " and the ladies have stuck to me ever 
since." 

He is now a useful and honorable member of society, and 
the cause of his reformation was the feeling that somebody 
cared for him, and that somebody a woman. 

There are young men entering the vortex to-day, and some 
of you ladies have power to stop them. You have power to 
throw an influence round them that will save them. You 
have power to do it in a very great degree by sympathy. 
What is not a woman's sympathy worth ? A word of sympa- 
thy from a woman's lips has many a time melted a hard heart. 
I remember reading of an incident that occurred many years 
ago in reference to a man who afterward made himself famous 
as a historian and statesman. Though he was a very intem- 
perate man, he loved a lady, and she acknowledged that she 
loved him ; " but," said she, " until you will pledge me your 
honor, as a gentleman, that you will never again touch intoxi- 
cating liquor, my hand cannot be yours." He went away, and 
was very angry, for he wished to have no such rule imposed 
upon him. But he loved her, and back again he went, and 
received the same answer. He went away again, and again 
returned, but with the same result. He pleaded, and she 
weepingly refused; and so it went on. One day, in the 
vicinity of the city where he lived (and when I visited that 



ONLY A WOMAN'S HANDKERCHIEF. 533 

city I was shown the place), the lady was passing, and saw 
some one lying beside the road. Curiosity induced her to 
look ; and there she saw the man who had knelt at her feet, 
the man who had asked her to 'become his bride ; there he 
lay, the hot sun blistering his forehead as he lay stupefied, 
stultified with the drink. She pitied him, felt sorrow for him, 
but what could she do? She took her handkerchief and 
spread it gently over his face, that the sun's rays might not 
burn him, and went away. Afterwards he came to himself, 
and staggered to a dram-shop near at hand, unconsciously 
putting the handkerchief in his pocket. 

He was a man of wealth, but guardians were placed over 
him, and his property was put under some restrictions ; yet 
he could always get drunk. On arriving at the dram-shop he 
said, " Give me some brandy ; " and brandy was put before 
him. He put his hand in his pocket — the handkerchief was 
there. He looked at it, and said, "Holloa! what's this? a 
handkerchief?" He spread it out, and in the corner he saw 
her name. Turning to the barkeeper he exclaimed, " Here's 
your brandy, sir. Brandy ! no more of it, not a drop ; Oh 
my God ! not another drop ; never ! never ! never ! " He 
went to the lady, and, upon his knees, swore before God that 
he would never drink again. She gave her hand to him and 
they were wedded. He afterwards rose to eminence, and he 
never tasted intoxicating liquor again. This was all achieved 
by her firmness, decision, and sympathy. Oh you have power^ 
ladies, by a word of sympathy and kindness, to do much. 
There are many ladies whose friends and whose relatives, 
perhaps, may be in danger. You can exert a powerful influ- 
ence over them if you will. 

We need a strong spirit of determination, and women 
generally have that; and when they set out to do a thing 
they almost always accomplish it, if it is possible. In a cer- 



534 



A BAND OF DETERMINED INVADERS. 



tain town in Massachusetts every dram-shop but one had 
been broken up, and the ladies determined that that one 
should exist no longer. About one hundred and fifty of 
them joined together and formed themselves into committees 
of twelve. They went to the liquor-seller's shop, and one 

talked ten min- 
utes, and another 
twenty, and an- 
other half an 
hour, and so on, 
and all twelve 
gave him a thor- 
ough-going tem- 
perance speech. 
When they were 
gone, the poor 
fellow looked 
very serious. 
Said he, " That's 
about the tough- 
est morning's 
work I've had 
for some time ; 
Idon't under- 
stand it. But, 
however, they '11 find they can 't move me, you know." The 
next day a second committee came in ; each one talked to 
him, and when all were gone the poor fellow said, " That 's 
worse than it was yesterday; they're coming thicker and 
faster; but I'm standing on my rights, they can't move 
me." The next day a third committee came ; he saw they 
were all different ladies, and he said, " Hold on a minute ; 
how many are there of you?" "Why, there are twelve 




"you're coming again, are you? 



FAITH IN WOMAN'S INFLUENCE. 535 

of us. We are the third committee ; there are twelve com- 
mittees, and when we have all visited you, we '11 begin again.' 
"Hold on. If a man is to die, let him die in peace. You're 
coming again, are you ? Well if you '11 give it up, I will." 
And he broke up his establishment. Now I do not mention 
this to show particularly that the ladies have strong conver- 
sational powers largely developed, but that they have perse- 
verance. 

We want them to engage in this movement. I believe if 
the ladies of this country should declare, " I will neither 
drink nor present intoxicating liquor as a beverage from 
this time forth," the drinking customs would fall into dis- 
repute in six months. I tell you it is the women who 
can regulate and control the social customs of the coun- 
try. It is of no use for some young men to say : " I don't 
care what the women think ; " you do, you do ; you can- 
not help it. It is unnatural for man not to care for what 
women think. I know it is very fashionable sometimes 
to speak contemptuously of woman. I never heard a man 
speak contemptuously of a woman without thinking that he 
never had a good mother, or a good sister, or a good wife ; 
for I defy any man that ever kneeled at his mother's side and 
felt her soft, warm hand resting on his head, and who can 
remember the little prayer his mother taught him, to speak 
contemptuously of woman. I have strong faith in woman's 

influence. 

" O woman, lovely woman, 
Nature made thee to temper man ; 
We had been brutes without ye ; 
Angels are painted fair to look like you; 
There 's in you all we believe of heaven, 
Eternal joy and everlasting love." 

That may be a little extravagant, but woman's influence 
is almost unbounded. A gentleman told the following story 



536 A MEMOKABLE EXPERIENCE. 

at one of my meetings in Scotland. A husband said to his 
wife, " Now, wife, you know I am the head of the house." 
"Well," said she, "you can be the head if you wish; I am 
the neck." " Yes," said he, "you shall be the neck." "But 
don't you know," said she, " the neck turns the head ? " 

And yet, with all my respect for womankind, I say the 
women are culpable, and are responsible for much of the 
evil of drunkenness. Let me give you a fact. Many years 
ago I was living in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and I started to 
hear the Germanias render Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in 
Boston, one Saturday evening. As I came to the place where 
the omnibuses met (we had no street-cars then), I heard the 
sound of merriment and laughter, and, as I am very fond of 
fun, I thought I would see what was going on. I found a 
group of young men, and in the centre was a young girl, 
seventeen years of age, as I learned afterward. She was 
very drunk. The young men were pushing her about in the 
rudest manner. One would push her one way, and another 
the other. T said : " Do } r ou call it sport to push that help- 
less girl about like that?" Somebody said, " That's Gough." 
I said, "Yes, that is my name." They allowed me to 
approach the girl, who was swaying to and fro, — she could 
not stand still, — and was crying bitterly, uttering that wail 
pitiful to hear from an animal, but far more pitiful to hear 
from a woman. I said, " Where do you live? " It was some 
time before she could or would answer me. She was so 
drunk she stammered badly. At last, by patience, I ascer- 
tained the name of the street and number of the house 
where she lived. Then I said to her, "Now, if you will 
trust me, if you will take my arm, I will see you safely 
home." She put her hands to her white face, and looked 
at me, and then grasped my arm as a drowning man 
would catch at a plank. I walked with her a mile and a 



A GOOD-NATURED OLD IDIOT. 539 

half. It was hard work, but at length we reached the house, 
and I rang the bell. The servant came to the door ; I told 
her who I was, and said : " I found this young lady in the 
streets, and she says that she lives here." " Oh, my good 
gracious ! " said the servant, and pulled the girl into the 
house, and shut the door. 

As I went to the concert, I said to myself, " People like 
to talk, especially about teetotalers. I have been seen walk- 
ing through the streets to-night with a drunken woman, arm 
in arm, and they will talk about it. Well, let them talk ; I 
can talk, too. I have a meeting to-morrow night ; Mr. Grant 
is to preside, and at the close of my lecture I will tell the 
whole affair ; " and so I did. At the close of the meeting 
a lady and gentleman pushed up to me, holding out their 
hands. " God bless you ! " " For what ? " " For bringing 
our daughter home last night." "What, your daughter?" 
" Yes, poor child," said the mother, " she is lying ill in bed, 
and we have left her to come to you and say, ' God bless you.' 
Oh, if you had left her with those young men, what would 
have become of our child ? — or if the policeman had taken 
her to the station-house, she would never have lifted her 
head again. She was not to blame. There was a wedding 
at her aunt's last week. Not being very well, I thought she 
had better not go to the ceremony. But yesterday was a 
clear, cold day, * and I said, ' You had better call on your 
aunt. You can return in the omnibus by nightfall.' She 
went, and when she reached the house she said, i I am feel- 
ing very cold ; ' and her aunt [one of those hospitable, good- 
natured old idiots that we sometimes meet] said, 'I will give 
you something to warm you, my dear,' and she gave her 
a glass of hot whiskey punch. My daughter had never 
tasted liquor before. We are teetotalers, and never have a 
drop of the cursed thing in the house, and she did not know 



540 TWENTY YEARS AFTER. 

what it was. She drank it, and began to feel badly, and 
said, 4 Aunt, I must go home.' i Well, my dear,' said her 
aunt, 'you must take a piece of the wedding cake to your 
mamma, and you must drink a glass of the wine we had at 
the wedding ; ' and she poured out a glass, and the child 
drank it. When she came out and had reached the corner 
of the street, she became bewildered ; she did not know what 
the matter was. After that she had no recollection of any- 
thing, but a dim, indefinite, confused idea of something, she 
knew not what, till she found herself in bed with her mother 
bending over her." 

Twenty years after that, a lady came to me in Music Hall, 
Boston, and said : " I am a wife and mother, and a member 
of a Christian church, and I am that girl you helped home 
when drunk." You may say, " That is a bad precedent." 
Bah, bah! for your precedents. There are some men and 
women who, for fear of establishing a precedent, cannot lift 
a poor human soul from perdition. They want a precedent. 
Perish precedents ! If I see a woman in trouble, and I can 
consistently help her out of that trouble, I never ask who she 
is, or how she fell into the trouble, until I have helped her 
out. That is my plan, and it should be yours. Help them 
out first, and talk to them afterwards of their wrong-doings. 
And when that girl, or rather that Christian wife and mother, 
held my hand in hers, I thanked God that I had helped a 
drunken girl home. 

" Oh," you say, " you ought to be very careful, especially 
in large cities, you ought to be very careful about what you 
do." Here is a human being in trouble, and you must be 
"very careful" how you help her out. Suppose you see a 
man drowning. He cries out for help. You do not ask, 
"Are you a Christian? What religious denomination do 
you belong to? What class of society do you move in?" 



DRINKING AMONG WOMEN. 541 

You do not hesitate to help him. And I tell you this, if he 
was the greatest burglar that ever lived, you would help 
him out first and put him in jail afterward. Help him out ! 
It is our business to help men and women out of their diffi- 
culties; and it is our business to do what we can to prevent 
others from falling into trouble. 

What do you think of a woman whose husband beats her, 
and who, when a good teetotaler says to her, "Exert your 
influence and get your husband to sign the pledge," exclaims, 
"Well, Dr. Mudge, I should like to see my husband get on 
in the world, but I should not exactly like him to sign the 
pledge, for I must have my pint of beer, and if he did not 
drink it he would not let me have it." What do you think 
of such a woman ? I think the beer must have stultified her 
better feelings. I was very much shocked in England and 
Scotland to see young girls entering a public-house and 
drinking in public places with young men. What can they 
expect such conduct to lead to? Does such a young girl 
think what the result will be of sitting there with that young 
man who tells her he loves her, and yet will ask her to drink 
a glass of liquor with him? Does such a man love you? 
Oh, if that woman would say, "If you offer me that, I have 
an idea of the estimation in which you hold me." I rejoice 
that drinking among women is not so common here as in 
Great Britain, but the custom is growing upon us. 

I find that those who give intoxicating liquor do not, as a 
rule, sympathize with those that suffer from it. A gentle- 
man in the city of Troy told me of a young lawyer who was 
a notorious drunkard. He signed the temperance pledge, 
went away and practised law in the West, and came back 
with considerable property. He had been engaged to a 
young lady who professed to love him, but the marriage had 
been postponed on account of his drinking habits. He came 
33 



542 THE POWER OF RIDICULE. 

back sober and a party was given in honor of the event. The 
young lady and the belle of the evening made up their minds 
that they would get him to drink some wine. They coaxed 
him, and vexed him, and provoked him, and began to ridicule 
him. 

There are some persons you cannot move by argument or 
by reason — you cannot lead them, you cannot drive them, 
you cannot coax them ; but they have a soft place, as every 
man has somewhere, and the shaft of ridicule will often touch 
it. It was the case with this young man ; he could not resist 
ridicule. In desperation he took the proffered glass of wine, 
and drank it. He was not sober for ten days. The cashier 
of the bank kept him in his own house and did everything he 
could to cheer him up, for he was almost broken-hearted, 
feeling that his prospects were ruined. He got him up and 
dressed him ; and, freed somewhat from the influence of 
the debauch, he went to the lady's house to call and was 
rejected contemptuously, and the door was shut in his face* 
In ten days from that time he was found in an open field 
dead, having drank himself to death. Now I say that that 
lady either had no right to give him drink, or she had no 
right to spurn him when he fell by her own act. A man has 
no right to put temptation in the way of his brother ; but if 
he tempts him, and his brother falls, he is bound to put his 
arm round him and help him up again. 

Young women, don't wait to testify against these drinking 
customs till you have been crushed by them. Testify against 
them now and resolve, " I will never again touch the wine, I 
will never again present it." I know some persons will say, 
" But shall I dictate to my guest what he is to take when he 
comes to see me?" Yes, to be sure. There is not a guest on 
the face of the earth, that would be so bold, — so bad, indeed, 
— as to declare to you that you must give him whatever 



QUESTIONABLE MANNERS. 



543 



he sees fit to demand. Suppose you invite a guest to your 
house. You cover your table with everything that is requi- 
site ; and after your guest has eaten his dinner, he takes out 
of his pocket a huge black pipe and a roll of tobacco called 
nigger-head, which he begins to cut, quietly observing that 
there can be no objection to his enjoying himself, as he is in 
the habit of smoking after dinner at home. Would you 
suffer your dining- 
room to be polluted 
in this manner ? 
No. You would 
start to your feet, 
and, addressing 
your visitor, would 
say, "How dare 
you, or any man, 
take it upon your- 
self to defile my 
home because you 
defile your own?" 
No man has a right 
to demand that you 
produce wine on your table solely for his gratification. If 
you are afraid of losing your guest because you do not 
place wine before him, the sooner he dines somewhere else 
the better. 

I have a home in the country. In summer time we have 
strawberries, rich and luscious, and when my friends come out 
to visit me, I always supply them. But if any one should 
come to my house and say, " To tell you the truth, I came 
not to see you, not to hold conversation with you, but to eat 
your strawberries," I would say to him, "The sooner you 
go about your business, the better; you had better seek 




AN UNWELCOME GUEST. 



544 INTERESTING INCIDENTS. 

strawberries somewhere else." And I would have my fair 
friends and others adopt the same course when a person ac- 
cepts an invitation not for the sake of their society, but for 
the sake of the wine. Young ladies, I would ask you to put 
your names to the total abstinence pledge ; or if you will not 
do that, agree that you will not offer intoxicating liquors to 
others, and consider yourselves as no longer required to 
furnish them for your guests. 

When I was in the city of Cincinnati several interesting 
events took place there, and one of them I will relate. I 
went to the female college to speak to the ladies, and one 
of them said to me, " Mr. Gough, will you write in my 
album ? " "I don't know what to write," said I. " Write 
the pledge," said she. I agreed to do that if she would sign 
her name to it, and she said she would, requesting me to put 
my name under hers, which I did. Others came with the same 
request, and there I sat writing until my arm and wrist 
ached. I wrote the temperance pledge that afternoon in one 
hundred and forty-three albums, to each of which a young 
lady's name was attached; and while I was in Cincinnati 
I wrote it in the albums of nearly eight hundred young 
ladies. Such, in fact, was the demand for albums that they 
were sought for in every quarter. One bookseller told me 
that he had not sold albums before for a year, but that week 
he had sold forty dollars' worth and had been obliged to send 
to New York for another supply. Old albums which had 
been thrown into corners were brought out. Some queer 
old musty ones, which had belonged to their mothers, and 
which had been stowed away for years, were brought to me 
that I might write the pledge in them, to which in every 
instance was attached the lady's name, mine being added as 
a witness. 

The boys also took it up. They procured little account- 



TELL-TALE STRAWS. 



545 



books, and I think I wrote a thousand pledges in account- 
books, belonging to boys and girls. Good work was brought 
about by means of those albums. Sometimes albums are put 
upon the drawing-room table. Now, suppose I am a young 
man, and that I go into a young lady's house, as young men 
will do, who have business among 
the young ladies. Well, I am 
shown into the drawing-room and 
asked to wait a few moments. 
The young lady may have her 
hair in papers, or there may be 
a few alterations in her dress to 
attend to. I am, likely, a lover 
of pictures, and I look 
at the engravings. Hav- 
ing looked at them, I 
next look at the books. 
I take up an album. 
Now, I will see how 
matters stand, and what sonnets 
are addressed to my Dulcinea's eye- 
brows. I turn the leaves over, and by 
and by I come to — I read — " We 
will not use intoxicating liquors" — 
hum — "or provide them for others" 
— hum — signed "Elizabeth — " 

I should understand the matter at once; not a word is nec- 
essary, she is a total abstainer. And if I have any sincere 
regard for that young lady, shall I dare ask her after that 
to take a glass of wine? If I am a young man of honor 
(and I would advise the young ladies to have nothing to 
do with any except such), I would no more ask her to take 
a glass of wine than I would think of addressing to her insult- 




'* HUM — 
SIGNED ELIZABETH. 



546 "I WOULD LIKE TO CATCH THEM." 

ing language which would bring the burning and indignant 
blush to her cheek. Another way in which good was done by 
those albums was in the young ladies asking the young gentle- 
men to write their autographs in them. Of course they would 
say "Yes," and then ask where they should write. The ladies 
were sure to turn over the pages till they came to the pledge, 
and then say, " Give me your signature here." " Do you 
mean here? " "Certainly," is the reply. Some would, and 
some would not ; but, to show you what may be done in this 
way, one bright-eyed young lady in Cincinnati told me that 
she had obtained the names of sixteen young men. She 
said, "I don't believe I could have induced them to do this 
unless I had urged them ; and now they tell me that some of 
these young men are breaking it." She was a beautiful girl, 
and, as she said this, she drew herself up, her eyes flashed 
fire, and she proudly said, " I would like to catch them. If 
a young man who had signed the pledge in my album broke 
it, I would never speak to him again." And as I looked at 
her, I thought any young man would be sufficiently punished 
if he saw her eyes flashing scorn upon him. There is no young 
man who can bear the scorn of woman, however much he 
may affect to despise it. And, young ladies, let your eyes 
flash scorn on an unmanly deed committed by any young 
man in your presence, and you will make him heartily 
ashamed. 

Adopt right principles and bring your influence to bear 
upon the young men of your acquaintance. Women can 
educate not only the child at the mother's knee, but they can 
also educate young men and bring them to occupy positions 
in society to which they would never attain without that 
education. A lady once said to me that when gentlemen 
were together they talked about matters that required some 
thought and knowledge to understand, — their conversation 



A NEGRO PREACHER'S FAITH. 547 

was often profitable ; but, when they come into the society of 
ladies, or when ladies are introduced to them, they drop, 
in many cases, all common-sense conversation and descend 
to miserable, paltry, contemptible twaddle, as if that was the 
only conversation fit for women. Whose fault is that ? It 
is the fault of the ladies themselves in a very great degree. 
Let these men understand that, to please you, they must 
cultivate, not their mustaches, not their whiskers, not that 
which tends merely to personal appearance, not a mere knowl- 
edge of dress ; but they must cultivate the mind and intellect 
which God has given them ; and until they do that, remain 
as you are, and let them know that they are not fit associates 
for you. Depend upon it, that if you follow this course you 
will lead young men to cultivate the mind, to take care of 
the intellect, and you will hear no more gossiping, miserable 
twaddle indulged in your presence. 

Ladies, will you help us ? You can, by your sympathy ; 
you say you cannot do much ; but do what you can. 

A colored preacher, who was inculcating the duty of obe- 
dience, said that if God's Word told him to jump through 
a wall ten feet high and two feet thick, he would not turn the 
book upside down for another reading, or reason about the im- 
possibility of the matter, but would go out and do it, because 
jumping at the wall was his work ; jumping through it, God's. 
So you do your duty, let what may hinder. The Bible en- 
courages you in the spirit of self-denial. We have much to 
battle against, but we must not anchor to the past. Ours 
is a day of progress, a day when truth is bursting through 
the rubbish of ages, and making itself glorious. Men are 
everywhere beginning to recognize each other as brethren ; 
wherever a wrong is perpetrated, the cry of indignation and 
sympathy rises from millions of voices. Therefore, do all you 
can and trust God for the results. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



RANDOM THOUGHTS 
SIDES OF LIFE- 



- STORIES AND SKETCHES FROM BOTH 
GLEANINGS OF A LEISURE HOUR. 



Religion in Everyday Life — Silent Influence — The Sentry of Pompeii — 
Faithful Unto Death — Origin of the Term " Teetotal' '— Dickey 
Turner — Death Before Bondage — Trading in Human Lives — The 
Auction-block — A Strong Man's Agony — Clinging to Respectability — 
The Traveller and His Gold — Seeking Shelter — The Pioneer's Hut — 
An Hour of Fear and Trembling — "It's Time to Go to Bed " — A Re- 
markable Incident — Anecdote of a Poor Negro — "Come, Cato, Get 
Up" — A Thrilling Incident — A Disabled Steamer — Drifting Toward 
the Shore — Power of Christian Example — A Ship in Distress — The 
Alarm Gun — Launching the Lifeboat— "I Will Go ; Who Will Follow 
Me " — Pulling for Life — Saved at Last — The Moderate Drinker — The 
Negro and His Potato Patch — A Disastrous Invasion — Old Tom's 
Pigs — "Daddy Moses" — Imparting Strength to Others. 

ANY of us are too much in 
the habit of looking at the 
duties of a Christian as con- 
fined to mere religious ordi- 
nances, and forget, or lose 
sight of, the fact that man is 
a social being, and that his 
religion does not render him less so. 
In the Bible, duties, commendations, 
promises constantly refer to the so- 
cial life, walking with God and be- 
fore God, as having to live with and 
before men in all the necessary associations of life, family 
relations, business relations, the social compact, in which the 
Christian is not to be a mere cipher, but to bring into society 
a new element, a power, leaven, salt. " Ye are the salt of the 

earth." As Christian men, we are bound to make our religion 

548 




FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH. 549 

the active, governing principle of life, carrying it with us in 
the workshop, in the daily employment, in the social circle, 
in our politics, wherever we are called in the providence of 
God to move or act, being " diligent in business, fervent in 
spirit, serving the Lord." 



I remember hearing that, on the Lake of Geneva, a bell 
was placed on the surface of the lake, close to the water's 
edge, for some experiment ; and at every stroke of the bell 
there was a ripple and a vibration on the other side of the 
•lake. Just so it is with you. There is a moral electricity 
connecting heart with heart, as the electric wire connects 
island with island. You cannot make a motion without 
exerting an influence. It is not the noisiest of us, nor those 
who are the most prominent, who exert the most influence ; 
there have been silent, quiet influences that have told more 
than all the force and power that could be put forth. There 
are young men among my readers who can exert a mighty in- 
fluence. It is not only an influence that will tell now, but 
will tell long after you are in your graves. 

Herculaneum and Pompeii were in their glory many cen- 
turies ago, when suddenly a heap of fire and ashes came down 
and buried them. The people were busy at their various 
occupations, — some were indulging in pleasure, some count- 
ing their gold, — but one stood as a sentry; and, though 
the rain of ashes came down, he stood at his post. Centuries 
after, with the rest, his remains were exhumed, and found in 
his tomb of ashes, still standing on guard, to show another 
race that there was constancy of purpose and firmness in duty 
even in Pompeii. 

ORIGIN OF THE TERM "TEETOTAL." 

I saw an article in " Notes and Queries " on the origin of 
the term "teetotal," in which that publication, usually so 



550 ORIGIN OF THE WORD TEETOTAL. 

correct, falls into the blunder, first, of spelling the word tea- 
total, and then stating that the name was given to the society 
because the members were confined to tea as a beverage. 
At a meeting in Preston, at which Joseph Livesey presided, 
who is now living, a man named Dickey Turner said, " Mr. 
Chairman, I finds as how the lads gets drunk on ale and 
cider, and we can't keep ' em sober unless we have the pledge 
total ; yes, Mr. Chairman, tee-tee-total." " Well done, Dick- 
ey," said Mr. Livesey, "we will have it teetotal;" and the 
first Total Abstinence Society was thus formed. It is on 
this principle of total abstinence that we base our whole ope- 
rations. 

Liberty is every man's inalienable right ; every true man 
desires freedom. History seems to be but a record of mighty 
struggles of the oppressed against the oppressor. Who 
would be a slave, to struggle and toil for another, to be held 
in bondage to another, wholly subject to the will of another, 
with no freedom of action, — person and service controlled by 
another ? We pity the abject beings reduced to slavery, in 
the power of an owner. How the flood of sympathy pours 
forth for the down-trodden and oppressed. How many bat- 
tles have been fought for freedom ! How many a wild spirit 
that could not be tamed into subjection has burst the 
shackles, and met death rather than bondage. Ah, yes, 
physical slavery is an awful thing. The Children of Israel 
were slaves in Egypt and in Babylon, but there was a 
difference, — in Egypt they were sold, in Babylon they had 
sold themselves. 

A man may be bought and sold in the market and yet be 
a freer man than he who sells him. I once saw a man — 
a slave — sold under peculiar circumstances. A trader 
wanted to buy him, but a benevolent man in the vicinity 



A LIFE OF BONDAGE. 551 

wished to keep the negro with his wife and child, who stood 
trembling a few yards from the auction-block. I shall never 
forget the look of agony with which the slave gazed on the 
trader, and then the ray of hope that illumined his face as he 
looked on his friend. But presently the trader offered a 
price that shut out hope, and the negro's friend turned on 
his heel and departed. Then the slave folded his arms ; I 
saw the twitching of the fingers, the convulsive working of 
the throat, the white teeth brought on the lip as if he would 
press the blood from under them ; I saw the eyelids swollen 
with unshed tears ; I saw the veins stand out like whip- 
cords upon his brow, and the drops like beads upon his fore- 
head, and I pitied him. It was a strong man's agony. But 
from his blood-shot eyes, as he looked at the group around 
him, there flashed a light that told of a wild, free spirit, — a 
soul that could not be enslaved ; and then, black as he was, 
bought and sold as he was, he loomed up before me in the 
glorious attitude of a free man compared with the tobacco- 
chewing, whiskey-drinking, blaspheming slaves to evil pas- 
sions who were selling a brother into slavery. 

Oh, the slavery of the man who has lifted up his hands that 
the wreath might be twined around his wrists and the band 
of flowers around his brow, and who finds these flowers 
twisted around rust}' iron bands eating into his marrow and 
burning into his brain till his garland of honor has become a 
band of everlasting infamy, and he lifts his galled, shackled 
hands to heaven and cries, " Who shall deliver me from this 
horrible bondage ? " 



How pitiful to see men who have fallen from positions of 
respectability into the debasing habit of drink ! Have you 
ever seen such a man, — clinging as with a death-grip to the 
last remnant of his respectability, — going through your 



552 



BROKEN-DOWN RESPECTABILITY. 



streets in a faded black coat well inked at the seams, but- 
toned up close to the chin to hide his soiled and ragged shirt, 
with, perhaps, an old rusty pair of gloves, and a couple of 
inches of wrist between the tops of the gloves and the cuffs of 
the once fashionable coat, the trousers 
positively shining with old age, the 
last penny that can be spared from 
the drink expended in blacking for 
the miserable boots, the hat so 
dilapidated, broken, and greasy, 
that he goes into mock mourning 
and hides it with crape, slinking 
miserably about, a wretched wreck? 



A gentleman said to me, as if 
it was a discouragement, "You 
are in a minority." Pure and 
undefiled religion is in a minor- 
ity. It is the multitude that 
are swift to do evil, and it is 
the few that are righteous. 
Oh, I thank God for the belief \ 
I have that the righteous are 
the salt of the earth. 




A WRETCHED WRECK. 



The world expects consistency, and when it does not find 
it, to all the hatred and bitterness against the principle is 
added a contempt for the professor. A young man, an 
infidel, was travelling in the western part of the United 
States, with a very large sum of money upon him, which he 
was conveying from one town to another across a very deso- 
late district. He was in hopes of reaching a certain town 
before night, but darkness came on when he was five miles 



AX HOUR OF DREADFUL FOREBODING. 



553 



away. He saw a light, and went to a log-hut and asked if he 
could find shelter for the night. A woman came and said 
she guessed he could ; that her old man was away, but that 
if he would put up his horse on the lee-side of the cabin he 
might come in. He came in, looked about him, was very 
suspicious, thought of his money. " What a place to rob me 
in ! What a place to murder me, and nobody the wiser for 




A SUSPICIOUS PLACE TO PASS THE NIGHT. 



it! " And he sat there, very uneasy till the man of the house 
came in, a rough-looking woodsman, a pioneer or trapper. 
He gave the stranger a rough welcome, but looking, as these 
men will, furtively out of the corner of his eye, he seemed to 
take the measure of the young chap, and then talked with 
him and gave him something to eat. He ate in fear and 
trembling, kept his hand on his treasure, very nervous, very 
anxious, very tremulous. 

The man said to him, " I will show you where you can 
sleep, sir." The young man rose, timid and trembling; he 



554 



THE PIONEER'S BIBLE. 



did not like the looks of things. " What a place this is to 

murder a man in ! Oh, dear ! My money and my life are in 

danger." So he came and sat by the fire, and made up his 

mind that he would not go to bed that night. The man 

urged him to retire. "It's time to go to bed." "Ah," 

thought the young man, " time for you, but not for me." He 

was going to sit up all 

night. "Very well," 

young man," said the 

woodsman, " If you 

choose to sit here all 

night, I shall not, and 

you certainly will 

have no objection to 

my doing what I have 

been accustomed to 

do for many years, — 

reading a Psalm out 

of the best of books, 

and asking God's 

blessing upon us." That very moment, infidel that he was, 

his fears were gone ; he went to bed, and never thought 

of his money. And he was so impressed with what he had 

seen that he wrote a letter to the newspapers, renouncing 

his infidelity, because of the power of Christian example 

upon him on that occasion. No amount of eloquence, 

talent, or profession will compensate for the want of a good 

example. 




AN UNEXPECTED PROCEEDING. 



Now, we will take, if you please, the Sabbath question. 
There are those who are in favor of upholding the sanctity 
of the Sabbath day. But some of these men, Christian men, 
too, seem to me to be preparing, — or you will allow me, if 



"IT'S SUNDAY MO'NIN', MASS A.' 



555 



you please, to illustrate what I mean by an anecdote of a 
negro, and we get some of our best illustrations from homely 
life. A negro was hired by a man who professed to be a 
Christian, as an assistant on his farm. This man was one 
of those who are always in favor of keeping the Sabbath, 
except when work of necessity demanded that there should 
be something done, and then he always quoted Scripture. 

But it was noticed that he 
was always preparing for 



Sunday work, and in hay- 




"i don't want to get up 



ing time he would always cut down a lot of grass on Saturday 
night, so that he could have an excuse for tossing the hay 
about in the morning, and shaking off the dew. So he 
called this negro on Sunda}^ morning. 

"Come, Cato, get up." 

"I don't want to get up. Sunday mo'nin', massa; always 
lay a-bed Sunday mo'nin'." 

"But get up and get your breakfast." 

" Don't want no breffus on Sunday mo'nin', massa ; rather 
lay a-bed than breffus." 



556 A CHRISTIAN HERO. 

" But you must get up and help us shake the dew off the 
grass." 

" Don't do no work on Sundays, massa ; I did n't hire out 
to work Sundays." 

" Oh, but this is a work of necessity." 

" Don't see dat, massa, at all ; don't see dat it 's a work 
of necessity." 

" Well, but would you not pull your ox out of the pit on 
the Sabbath day?" 

" Oh, yes, massa, but not if I shoved him in on Saturday 
night." 

Do you know I am very much afraid there is a good deal 
of this shoving in on Saturday night? You speak out 
bravely against the running of Sunday trains for pleasure 
excursions ; you oppose the general use of cars on the Sab- 
bath day, and yet you will use the same agency to go from 
one end of the city to the other, and even into the country, 
to hear a popular preacher. Now, is that consistent ? 



Who, in trouble or in disaster, is the hero ? It is the 
Christian man, and there his example shines out with bright 
radiance. On the steamer " Atlantic," plying between Nor- 
wich and New York, whilst tossed about that long night on 
the Sound, with the steam-chest exploded, and all in confu- 
sion, the rudder ropes burnt away, and the vessel drifting 
without a particle of sail or anything to help her, there were 
sceptical men, ungodly men, and men of business ; wealthy 
men were there, and some of them were offering thousands 
and thousands of dollars to anyone who would save their 
lives ; they gave no comfort to anyone. But there was one 
godly man, Dr. Armstrong, of the Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions, who worked with all his might as long 
as there was any hope. When at length death stared them 



THE SHIPWRECK. 



567 



in the face, and they felt that they must drive on the shore 
and the ship must go to pieces, Dr. Armstrong stood calm 
and quiet, not like a Stoic, but with the strong faith of the 
Christian. And they came to him for comfort ; every eye 
was fixed on him ; he was the example ; they clung to him in 
that hour of danger; and when he said, "Let us pray," 

women sobbed 
and strong men 
bowed them- 
selves, while the 
Christian hero, 
who had been 
first in working 
for safety while 
hope remained, 
lifted up his voice 




in prayer, 



and 



DEATH STAKED THEM IN THE FACE. 



then, as a noble 
example of heroic 
faith and confi- 
dence, waited the 
dread result with 
the fortitude and 
quietness of a 
Christian. It is the Christian man that the infidel looks to 
in time of trouble or distress. He becomes the hero. Why? 
By the power and force of his example. 

Let us suppose a shipwreck ; a raging sea, a mighty hurri- 
cane ; the people in the village are full of alarm ; they hear 
the gun that tells of distress ; they go down to the beach ; it 
is a. terrible night; they see the blue lights that reveal the 
ship in distress, with men clinging to the masts and to the 
shrouds, and hear the cry of passengers upon the deck. 
34 



558 TEACHING A DRUNKARD HOW TO DRINK. 

They bring down the lifeboat, but the surf is so terrific that 
no one will venture out ; one thinks of his wife and children, 
another of his old mother, another thinks of his brothers and 
sisters. There is the boat, there is the wreck ; no one dares 
to launch that boat, there is so much danger. Another gun, 
another blue light ; there, there ! It is too much for them ; 
one young man steps forward and leaps into the boat. " I 
will go, who will follow me ? " At that moment there is a 
press forward, and every man is ready to take an oar. Who 
is the leader of those men ? The volunteer. The volunteer, 
by the tacit consent of all, stands at the helm ; he orders 
them to pull at the oars ; his eye is fixed upon the wreck. 
He is the master of the expedition, and when the passengers 
are all safely brought ashore, he, the hero in that fearful 
strife with the elements, is the most modest man of the 
company. 

Just so with the Christian man ; he is the hero in the 
struggle ; he is the modest man when earthly rewards are to 
be showered upon those who have performed service for their 
fellow-men. 



You say you set a good example. Do you set a good 
example to the drunkard? Some persons say they do, 
because if the drunkard drinks just as they do he will 
never get drunk ; he will be a moderate drinker. Now, we 
will take the drunkard, if you please. Here he is. " Follow 
my example." "Very well, sir." "I take it twice a day." 
"Very well, sir." "I take it at noon, and I take it at my 
dinner at four or five o'clock." " Very well, sir." " No\¥ 
follow my example." "Yes, sir." "You drink just when 1 
do, and only when I do." "Yes, sir." "Well, now, we 
come together at twelve to take the first glass, you and I." 
"Yes, sir." "Pour it out; I drink it ; you drink it." The 



DICK'S GARDEN AND TOM'S PIGS. 559 

moderate drinker has drunk it, and this poor man has drunk 
it. They go away! You go to your business; you have no 
thoughts about the wine or drink, none at all. You attend 
to your business as usual. 

Four o'clock comes. You have been spending your time 
as usual. What has he been doing ? He has been getting 
nervous. He could not help it. He feels strange sensa- 
tions; he cannot help them. Those sensations have grown 
into a longing ; he cannot help it. He has been thinking 
there never was such a long afternoon ; he has been looking 
at his watch, — if he has one ; he is irritable ; he is going to 
have a certain gratification when four o'clock comes. You 
quietly come to your glass. There stands the nervous man ; 
he looks at his glass ; his eyes gleam like those of a tiger that 
has once tasted blood and sees it again. You take your 
liquor, sip it quietly; he takes his, clutches it, looks at 
you, looks around wildly, drinks it at a draught, and before 
you are ready to go to bed he is drunk ; he could not help 
it; to save his life he could not help it. Why? Because his 
system is diseased, and it is utterly impossible for that man to 
drink moderately. 



A negro named Dick had a piece of land in which he had 
planted yams and sweet potatoes. Another negro, named 
Tom, had a sow and nine pigs, and when Dick went to get 
his potatoes one night, after his hard day's work, he found 
them all rooted up and the garden destroyed. He was in a 
terrible rage. He said : " Dere 's dat old Uncle Tom's sow 
and de pickaninnies hab bin in my gar'n an' eat up all my 
'taters. Now I '11 hab satisfaction. I '11 make him pay de 
damage, dat's what I'll do." Well, Moses was a Christian 
patriarch among his fellows in the settlement, and he said 
to Dick, — "Dick, what's de matter?" 



560 CHRISTIANITY, PIGS, AND WATERS. 

"Matter? matter 'nuff. Dere 's old Tom's sow and 
pigs has bin an' root up all my 'taters, and now I'll 
make old Tom pay de damage. I'll seize on de pigs, I'll 
seize on de sow, I '11 seize eberyting, — I '11 make him pay 
de damage." 

"Well," says Moses, "stop a minute, Dick; you know 

Tom's an old 
man." 

"Well, I know 
he is. Dat's got 
nottin' to do wid his 
pigs." 

"Yes, but you 
know he 's not got 
a bit of ground, such 
as you have, and he 
'pends on dat sow 
and dem pigs for his 
winter's store." 

" Dat makes n o 
difference to me. 
What if he does ? he 
ought to keep his 
pigs at home, not 
fat de old sow in 
my gar'n. I '11 make him pay de damage, dat 's what 
I'll do." 

" Dick, stop a minute. You perfess to be a Christian ? " 
" Well, I 'specs I is a Christian, I 'specs I is. But what 's 
dat got to do wid my 'taters? I'll make him pay de damage, 
dat's what I'll do." 

" Ah, but, Dick, you perfess to love de Lord Jesus ? " 

" Well, Moses, I hopes I does ; I hopes I does. But, daddy 




DADDY MOSES AND DICK. 



SELF-DENIAL. 551 

Moses, dat's nottin' to do wid de pigs rootin' up my 'taters. 
You know I must hab satisfaction ; I must make him pay de 
damage, dat's what I must do." 

" Now, Dick, I 'm going to ask you one oder question, 
and den I'll neber ask you anoder. Jess you answer dat, 
and den I '11 neber ask you anoder. Hab you eber paid de 
Lord Jesus Christ all de damage dat you hab done to him?" 

u No, I don't tink I hab. Pay Him, Daddy Moses ! why, if 
I lib as long as Medusla, work ebery day, and not be sick 
once, I '11 neber be able to pay Him one stiver. I tell you 
what, Daddy Moses, I didn't like to gib up all my yams and 
'taters to old Tom for his sake, but for de Lord Jesus Christ's 
sake, I can. Now you go and tell Uncle Tom dat if I get 
anoder gar'n an' get 'taters in, he may let all de pigs run in 
as much as he pleases, and I'll neber ask no damage." 

That is the principle. And I appeal to Christian men, and 
ask them, for His sake, to be willing to make some sacrifice, 
to practise some self-denial in stooping to the weaknesses of 
those who are erring, knowing that you are not made a par- 
taker of their weaknesses, for the strongest man, morally 
speaking, that ever lived has been the man who has imparted 
the most strength to his weaker brother. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

MODERATION — THE CUP OF DEATH — THE HUMOROUS SIDE 
OF DRUNKENNESS — THE DARK SIDE. 

A Minister's Dangerous Advice — Men Who " Can't Stand It"— Story of 
the Church Member Who Went After a Load of Goods — Taking a " Nip " 
to Keep Out the Cold — Another "Nip" — A Ludicrous Tableau — 
Listening to an Account of a Surgical Operation — I Am Compelled to 
Leave the Room— An Actor's Foolish Wish — Brainless Young Ladies — 
A Story for the Benefit 'of Young Women — An Unwilling Bride- 
groom—The Humorous Side of Drunkenness — Ludicrous Incidents 
-"Toodles" — "That's the Way I Always Come Down Stairs" 
— Anecdote of Bishop Clarke — The Man Who Swallowed the Spool 
of Silk -"Wife! Wife! I'm All Unravelling "- A Good Story - 
An Exceedingly Comical Situation — The Dark Side — A Bridegroom 
Sentenced to be Hanged — False Arguments. 




NE source of embarrassment I 
have in continuously speaking 
on the subject of temperance 
is that my range of argument 
is very limited. The physio- 
logical aspects of the move- 
ment are discussed by scien- 
tists, physiologists, and physicians ; and 
the scriptural argument enforced by 
biblical scholars. I am neither a bibli- 
cal scholar nor a physiologist; there- 
fore I must take the question just as it is, and occupy the 
ground with regard to which there is no dispute, and in which 
little argument is needed. The disease ; the cause ; and 
the remedy. The disease, drunkenness ; the cause, drink ; 
the remedy, abstinence from drink ; and that is so simple, it 

562 



DANGEROUS ADVICE. 563 

needs no argument whatever to prove it. If we could only 
induce the people to adopt the principle of total absti- 
nence, the evils of drunkenness would be rolled back from 
the land forever. All that can be said on this subject must 
be very much like taking the same pieces of colored glass 
and the same beads in the same kaleidoscope, and shaking 
them up occasionally to present a little different appearance 
with the same materials. 

A person once said to me : " Well, well, it 's all right for 
you to talk about drunkenness, but why don't you talk about 
some other evil? Is intoxication the worst sin in the world? 
Is there no other evil in the world but drunkenness? " Why, 
we battle this evil because drunkenness solidifies and crys- 
talizes and makes chronic every evil passion of depraved 
human nature. It is the promoter of all that is evil, vile, 
and abominable. 

A minister once said to his young men : " Temperance is 
a more manly virtue than total abstinence," meaning, by 
temperance, moderation. This is a fallacy that is deceiving 
young men. A person once put the same idea before me in 
another way. He said : 

"I hate a drunkard. I think a drunkard is a beast." 

" Then," I said, " I hope you are a teetotaler." 

" Ah, no, no ; I hate your teetotalism as bad as I hate 
excess." 

"Why?" 

" Because excess is beastly, and teetotalism is cowardly." 

" I do not understand you." 

" I stand on the manly principle of moderation. I say to 
young men : 4 Now, follow my example. Use this article in 
moderation ; use it as not. abusing it. Exercise your self- 
denial, self-control, and self-government ; and by the exercise 
of these qualities you develop your highest and noblest man- 



564 WHAT IS EXCESS? 

hood.' Don't you see? Now, what do you develop by 
teetotalism? Nothing but a miserable spirit of cowardice. 
You say, ' There is an article ; run ! ' I say, ' There is an 
article ; meet it like a man, and exercise self-denial, self-con- 
trol, and self-government.' Don't you see that a man grows 
strong by resistance ? You make a man flabby ; I make him 
firm. Now I stand between the two extremes ; teetotalism, 
which is cowardly, and excess, which is beastly, — upon the 
manly position of moderation, exercising my self-denial, 
self : control, and self-government, thereby developing my 
highest and noblest manhood." 

" Yes, very nicely put," I said. " What is excess ? " 

" Drinking too much." 

" What is drinking too much? " 

" Excess." 

" I know it is ; but what I mean to ask you is a pretty 
plain question. Would six tumblers of whiskey-toddy in a 
day be excess for you?" 

" For me ? Six ? Well, no, not if I could stand it." 

Now, according to that man's theory, if a man drinks as 
much as he can hold, and " stands it," that man is develop- 
ing his highest and noblest manhood, is he not ? If he drinks 
two quarts of whiskey in a day and " stands it," he is exer- 
cising self-denial, self-control, and self-government in the 
moderate use of drink ; and if he drinks two glasses and does 
not "stand it," but staggers under it, there is a frightful 
illustration of the utter want of self-denial, self-control, and 
self-government in the excessive use of intoxicating liquors. 
Now, what is excess ? In the common understanding of that 
term, simply and solely the inability of a man to " stand it." 
If he "stands it," he is not drunk; if he does not "stand it," 
he is. You cannot judge of a man's excess by the quantity 
he drinks ; it is by the effect of that quantity on the brain 



TWO NIPS TOO MITCH. 565 

and nervous system. There are some men who can drink 
moderately, and there are some who cannot. There are 
some men who can "stand it," and there are some men who 
cannot; and we condemn the latter because they are not 
able to "stand it." 

A man whom I knew joined the church by profession of 
faith. Knowing his antecedents, I asked him to sign the 
pledge, and he said, "Well, Mr. Gough, I would in a minute 
if I were not a Christian." I said, " Why should that hinder 
you ? " " Because I need no pledges. I am restrained and 
governed by the grace of God. I have come out from my 
young companions. I was converted in the last revival, and 
I want to show them that without any pledges or temper- 
ance societies, or mere human agency, the grace of God is 
able to keep me." 

A very good idea as far as it meets the case, but the grace 
of God does not prevent physical effects from physical causes. 
If I have any grace in my heart, it prompts me to pray, 
" Lead me not into temptation ; " and if, for the trial of my 
faith and patience, he sees fit that I shall be tempted, there is 
a promise that I shall not be tempted more than I am able to 
bear, and that in every temptation there shall be a way of 
escape. But if I think I have so much grace that I can vol- 
untarily walk into temptation, and trust to that grace to save 
me from falling, I shut myself out of the pale of that prom- 
ise, and render it exceedingly doubtful if I have any grace 
at all. 

To return to the case in hand. This man kept a store in 
a small village. One drizzly November afternoon he drove a 
one-horse wagon seven miles, for a load of goods. When he 
arrived at his destination he took a glass of brandy-and-water, 
to keep out the cold, — medicinally. When he had loaded 
his wagon he took another drink, in view of the drizzly ride 



566 



A SORRY PLIGHT. 



back. Arrived at the square in the village, he . descended 
from his wagon, backed himself against the thills, and there 
he stood. Some one came up to him, and said, "Why, 
what's the matter with you?" Rubbing his head, till his 
hat fell off into the road, he said, "I — don't — know." 
Another coming up, said, " But I do, though ; you 're drunk." 
And so he was, — a church-member babbling, maudlin, silly, 

staggering drunk; right in 
the square of the village. 

Now there were a num- 
ber of young men who did 
not like that revival, and 
this was what some people 
call " nuts " for them. " A 
^1 member of the church ! oh, 
oh ! Why, that 's one of the 
new converts. He spoke the 
other night at the prayer- 
meeting. Set 'im up ! Oh, 
oh ! " Now here was a 
church disgraced through 
an individual member. 
What did the church do? 
They disciplined him. 
They dealt with him. They 
were obliged to deal with him. And the dealing with him 
so broke his heart, that he gave up his business and worked 
on a farm for about eighteen months. Never did I know a 
man so completely broken down as he was, by the disgrace of 
that church discipline in this small village. Now for what 
did the church discipline him ? They disciplined him solely 
because he could not stand two glasses of brandy and water. 
If he had stood it, they would not have touched him. If he 




"i — DON'T — KNOW. 



MEN WHO "CAN'T STAND IT.'' 567 

had drank twenty glasses and stood it, they would not have 
dealt with him. They disciplined him for what he could 
not help. He could help drinking, but he could not help the 
effect after he had drank, and they disciplined him for that. 

I knew men in that church who drank two glasses every 
day of their lives, and I should like to see the church under- 
take to deal with them. Would not there be a row ? "Any- 
body see me the worse for drink ? I should like them to say 
so. I challenge them to say so. I should like to see the 
church discipline me!" Now the church does not touch 
these men, because they can " stand it " ; but the poor fellow 
who cannot stand it is disciplined. Many a man has been 
sentenced to prison for drunkenness by a judge who drank 
more liquor than he did. Many a church-member has been 
disciplined for drunkenness who drank less in quantity than 
those who condemned him. You may consider me radical, 
I like to be radical, because " radical " means " going to the 
root of things ; " and I hold this (I am not judging for your 
churches), that that church had no right to discipline that 
man for drunkenness if they did not discipline the other 
church-members for drinking. The drinking the man can 
help, the effect he cannot help. 

But, after all, the moderate drinker despises and holds in 
contempt the man who cannot drink moderately. You do 
not like the term " cannot." I do not say, who cannot let it 
alone altogether, for every man who is not utterly broken in 
will by his dissipation, can abstain ; but some cannot drink 
moderately. You say one man can do what another can. 
Stop, my friend, let me illustrate the contrary. A gentleman 
once informed me that he took great interest in surgical ope- 
rations, and that to witness an amputation or a dissection was 
a positive enjoyment. Very well, let him take his enjoyment. 
Ask me to witness a surgical operation. I cannot do it. At 



568 AN ACTOR'S FOOLISH WISH. 

the first sight of the instruments, the glittering steel of the 
knife, I should feel agitated ; at the first incision, I should 
grow faint ; at the sight of blood, I should drop. I remem- 
ber once, in the dining-room of Professor Miller of Edinburgh, 
after the ladies had retired, the conversation among the gen- 
tlemen turned on the profession of surgery, and the Professor 
began a description of a very difficult operation he had 
performed, when I said, "Doctor, please excuse me, but 
I must leave the room ; " and I did. Now will you despise 
me, and hold me in contempt, and call me weak-minded, 
because I could not listen to his story ? The mind, the will, 
the intellect, had nothing to do with it. Call it a physical 
infirmity, if you will ; for that I am not to blame, though it 
may be, in one sense, a misfortune. 

Again, I say, it is impossible for some men to drink in 
moderation. Is that a man's fault ? Why not stop after the 
first glass ? I give you the following fact. 

A gentleman belonging to the theatrical profession said 
to me : " Mr. Gough, I would give ten thousand dollars if I 
could drink. You don't know what I would give if I was a 
splendid drinker." I said, "I don't understand you." He 
replied, " Now there is Colonel So-and-So [naming him] ; he 
will drink a glass of wine with one, and a glass of wine with 
another, and take a bottle or a bottle and a half of wine at 
the dinner-table, and there is no perceptible difference in 
him ; I meet him next morning as fresh as a daisy, just as if 
he had come out of a bath. Now if I take one glass of 
sherry with my fish, I want another." I said, " Why don't 
you stop at the one glass?" "Ah, there's tlie rub. That 
one glass has gone to my head, that is, touched my brain ; 
slightly, to be sure, but enough to weaken my will. I never 
go to a dinner-party but with a determination that I will 
drink but one glass. I say to my wife, ' I will only take one 



MEN WITHOUT CONSCIENCE. 569 

glass;' but she says, 'My dear, I know better.' And she 
says truly, because that one glass, when it has touched my 
brain, has weakened the power of my will; it has warped my 
judgment ; it has affected my self-control ; it has stimulated 
my perception, while it has destroyed its accuracy. I take 
another glass, and another ; and I am going to the Devil." 

I said, "Why don't you break it off altogether?' " Ah," he 
said, " I have not moral courage enough to say to my friends, 

I I cannot drink moderately.' Gentlemen will say to me, ' I 
never saw "Master Walter" better performed, and your 
good lady's " Julia " was perfection last night. Take a 
bottle of wine with us.' These are my patrons, and I cannot 
turn upon them and say, 'No,' and reject every offer of 
friendship. I have not courage to tell them I cannot drink ; 
there I am weak, so I say to them, ' I will just take one 
glass,' and there it is, and I am going to my ruin." Now 
these are the men, nervously organized, who cannot drink 
moderately. Therefore total abstinence is their only safe- 
guard. They must adopt it. 

But one reason why we find it difficult to move the people 
is their indifference to the evils of drunkenness. Go with 
any of your city missionaries, and you will see scenes that 
will harrow your inmost soul and make your hair stand on 
end, but these things are hidden from the vast majority of 
the people. Simple intoxication is thought nothing of, — 
that is, getting drunk "once in a while," "occasionally," 
"just a little over the mark," and the like. Did you ever 
hear a man say, "I am not a thief; I know I steal occa- 
sionally, but I am not a thief; I am not a liar; I '11 knock a 
man down who calls me a liar, for I tell a lie only once in a 
while"? Yet you may hear a man say, "I am not a drunk- 
ard; any man who calls me a drunkard insults me, yet I do 
get ' tight,' ' three sheets in the wind,' ' a brick in my hat,' 



570 SILLY YOUNG WOMEN, 

4 mops and brooms' occasionally, but I am not a drunkard." 
Now if a man steals once, he is a thief ; if he lies once he is 
a liar; but we do not consider that a man is a drunkard 
until he is drunk two thirds of his -time. Habitual drunken- 
ness we consider something terrible ; occasional intoxication, 
nothing. Why, we laugh at it. We make sport of it. 

I once heard some young ladies talk in a railway train, — 
and you know young ladies often use the superlatives. One 
said ; " Oh, it was perfectly splendid. I never laughed so 
much in all my life. Oh, it was such fun. We were going 
out for a sleigh-ride and were to have a supper and dance at 
the hotel ; and when we reached there, some of those young 
men went to the bar and began to cut up. I never saw 
such cuttings up. I laughed, well I never laughed so much 
in all my life; and the more they went to the bar, the more 
they cut up. And when we were all ready to dance, some 
of the young gentlemen were in such a state that they could 
not stand up with their partners, and I danced with a lady 
friend. Laugh! I thought I should have laughed until I 
died. And when we were all ready to start for home, some 
of the young men were in such a state that the landlord had 
put them to bed, and we came home without them. It was 
such fun. Ha, ha!" What! Young men so drunk that 
they could not be polite to ladies, and could not go home 
with them ! And that is fun ! fun ! 

Let me say a word or two to the ladies, for their influence 
is of great importance in temperance work. I do not pre- 
tend to say that I know the reason why the ladies do not 
wish to get rid of the drinking customs of society, but I will 
tell you a story that was told to me. A clergyman in this 
country was called upon to marry a couple, and the man was 
so very drunk that the clergyman said : " I will have nothing 
to do with you. You must come when you are sober. You 



A HARD CASE. 



571 



are miserably drunk and not in a fit state to be married." 
He went home, and in about a week afterwards came again 
as drunk as ever, or a little worse. " Why," said the clergy- 
man, "I told you before that I would not marry you in 
such a state as this. Go away with you, and come again 
when you are in a proper condition." About a week after 




that, the clergy- w5|kii x ^ \^i qm ing state to be 

man met the girl a , i3f$f married." "Lor' 

in the street and Mi sir," said she, 

said to h e r, ,l !|\M; ii 111 "he won't come 

"Young woman, liwj^^ ft W wnen ne ' s so ~ 

you should not ^ll^iffl^^^^PW ber!" I do not 

bring that man \§> pretend to say, 

in such a shock- an unwilling bridegroom, you know, that 
that is the reason, but such a thing as that looks a little 
suspicious. 

Young men, I appeal to you ; what is it for a man to get 
drunk? Come with me to the Yosemite Valley in California. 
Yonder stands that mighty rock, El Capitan, a mile away. 
It seems in this clear, dry atmosphere as if you might strike 
it with a stone. Approach it. Nearer yet. How it looms 
up before you ! How it grows in majesty and grandeur ! 
See yon shrub. Shrub? That is a tree one hundred and 



572 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 

fifty feet in height and four feet in diameter. Nearer yet ; 
still nearer. See that dent in the face of the rock. Dent? 
It is a fissure seventy-five feet deep. Nearer, and yet still 
nearer. Now look up, up, till your eye rests on the summit, 
thre.e thousand six hundred feet above you. Anchored in 
the valley beneath, seared and seamed with the storms of 
centuries, there it stands, two-thirds of a mile right up, a 
solid rock ! And as your lips quiver, your nerves thrill, 
your eyes fill with tears, amid the grandeur, beauty, and 
sublimity of the scene, you are awe-struck, and remember 
how frail you are. "The inhabitants of the earth are as 
grasshoppers." 

Look to the right of you; see that wonderful South Dome; 
and there is the Cloud's Rest rising six thousand feet from the 
valley beneath, over a mile, rugged and grand, sublime, inac- 
cessible. Turn again. There are the Three Brothers, four 
thousand two hundred feet in height ; and there the Cathe- 
dral Rocks, three thousand eight hundred feet high ; there 
also stand the Sentinel Dome and Sentinel Rocks, mighty and 
magnificent, two thousand eight hundred feet high. Look 
yonder and see the great Yosemite Falls dashing over yon 
precipice, striking the rock at the depth of one thousand six 
hundred feet, then bounding four hundred feet further, and 
then down six hundred feet more, like showers of sky-rockets 
exploding as they fall. Hear them roar and dash. Stand 
within the spray, if you will, right in the very arc of the 
double rainbow as the water falls two thousand six hundred 
feet, half a mile clown. How grand, how sublime, how mag- 
nificent! And then you realize that the inhabitants of the 
earth are but " as the small dust of the balance." And while 
you are absorbed, drinking in the beauty and awed by the 
sublimity, there comes to you this passage of Holy Writ : 
" God created man in his own image, in the image of God 



MAN A LIVING SOUL. 573 

created he him." " He breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life," and made him (not gave him, but made him) "a 
living soul." 

I, so small, so weak, so feeble, unable to climb fifty feet 
upon the face of this rock, — yet that is a dead rock, and I 
am a living soul. This shall decay ; I shall live, for I am 
a man. I have a mind capable of understanding in some 
degree the greatness of the Almighty; a reason able to 
worship him intelligently, and a heart enabling me to love 
him. I am a living man, having within me the fire of God, 
and a spark of immortality which will never go out. For 
me Christ, the Saviour of the world, died. I am worth more 
than all this magnificent materialism. I am A MAN. The 
elements are to melt with fervent heat. This world is to be 
removed. " The Milky Way will shut its two arms and hush 
its dumb prayer forever," but I shall live with a destiny 
before me as high as heaven and as vast as eternity. All the 
material universe, with its grandeur, its beauty, its magnifi- 
cence, is but the nursery for my infant soul, and the child is 
worth more than the nursery. I, a living, thinking, hoping, 
reasoning, believing man, am worth more than all God's 
material universe. And there is not a horse in your stable, 
there is not an ox in the stall, there is not a snake that draws 
its slimy length through the long grass, there is not a reptile 
that you crush with your heel, and shudder as you crush it, 
but is better fulfilling the purposes of God in its creation 
than is a man when he — gets drunk. 

It is an awful degradation, and yet we laugh at drunken- 
ness! — at certain phases of it. We cannot help it. I do 
not blame people for laughing. Man is the only animal that 
can laugh, and he ought to enjo} T the privilege, and I mean 
to. But you know, and I know, that we often laugh at some 
of the phases of drunkenness. The funniest farce is often 
35 



574 



THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF DRUNKENNESS. 



that in which the prominent character is drunk. How. people 
have laughed at the actions of " Toodles ! " I never saw the 
play, but I bought the book to see what sort of a play it was. 
One who saw it said he laughed at the imitation of the 
drunken man till his sides ached. I could fill page after 
page by relating the funniest of stories about the drink, but 
that which we laugh at is but one phase of an awful fact, a 
dreadful reality. 

To be sure we laugh. One poor fellow fell down a flight 
of thirty or forty 
stairs in Erie, Penn- 
sylvania, and when 
a man came to help 
him up, he said : " Go 
away; I don't want 
any help ; that 'sh 
the way I alius 
come down stairs." 
The Bishop of Rhode Island 
told me that once he saw a 
man whom he had known years 
before, very drunk by the side 

of the road. He went to him and said : " My poor fellow, 
I am really sorry for you," and went away. By and by he 
heard the man call, " Bishop, Bishop ! " So he went back. 
" Now," he said, " Bishop, if you are very sorry, and you say 
so, I will forgive you." We laugh at such drolleries and at 
such vagaries as we do at the man who came home at four 
o'clock in the morning and said it was but one. " But," said 
his wife, " the clock has just struck four." " I know better, 
for I heard it strike one — repeatedly ! '" 

We cannot help laughing, but we know all the while that 
we are looking at only one phase of a terrible evil. You 




STRUCK BOTTOM. 



CRIES FOR HELP. 



575 



have heard of the man who went into his house in the dark, 
and, being very thirsty, groped about for the water pitcher 
and found it. He lifted it to his mouth and began to drink 
very rapidly. One of his children had dropped a soft spool 
of silk into the pitcher, and in his hurry he swallowed it. 
He felt something very disagreeable and strange, and he 
became frightened, and dropped the pitcher. " Oh dear, oh 
dear, oh dear ! " He 
caught hold of the end 
of the silk, and in great 
affright began to draw 
the thread from his 
mouth. "Wife, wife," 
he shouted, " hurry up, 
hurry up, Vm all un- 
ravelling I " 

I remember, when I 
was in Glasgow, hearing 
a man in the city hall 
tell a story which made 
me laugh till my sides 
ached. I was not laugh- 
ing at drunkenness, but w 
at the ridiculous fea- 
tures of it. I cannot tell 
you the story as he did, but I will give you an idea of it. 
He said: — 

" There was a man, a laird, who went with his man, Sandy, 
to pay rent to the Squire ; and the two, or it may have been 
all three, became intoxicated. In the gray of the morning, 
the laird and Sandy were riding towards home on horseback, 
and very drunk. They had neglected the animals all night, 
so, when they came to a stream of water, the laird's horse 




HURRY UP, I'M ALL UNRAVELLING." 



576 DECIDEDLY MUDDLED. 

very suddenly put down his head to drink, and the laird, 
being in a ' limpsy ' state, as we call it, slipped over the 
pommel of the saddle and the head of the horse, into the 
water. 4 Sandy, Sandy ! something has fallen off.' 

" 4 No, laird, there 's naething fell off.' 

44 4 Sandy, I heard a splash.' 

44 Sandy dismounted and said : 4 It 's yoursel' that ? s in the 
water.' 

44 4 It canna be me, Sandy, for I 'm here.' 

44 Sandy helped the laird on the horse, but unfortunately 
he was this time mounted the wrong side before. 

44 4 Now, Sandy, gie me the bridle ; gie me the bridle, 
Sandy.' 

44 4 Wait till I find the bridle. There is na any bridle, and 
there is na any place for a bridle,' said Sandy. 

44 4 Gie me the bridle, Sandy ; I must hae one to steer the 
beast wi,' exclaimed the laird. 

44 4 Ah, laird,' replied Sandy, 4 here 's a miracle. The horse's 
head 's aff, an' I canna find the place where it was, and there 's 
naething left but a long piece o' his mane.' 

44 4 Gie me the mane then, Sandy. Woh, woh ! He is gang- 
in' the wrong way, Sandy.' " And so the thing went on. I 
laughed till my sides ached. We laugh at such stories 
because they are ludicrous ; but, I repeat, they illustrate only 
one phase of an awful fact. 

Do not say I make merry at drunkenness. A man in one 
of our Connecticut towns came home drunk. His little boy, 
of three and a half to four years of age, ran forward to meet 
his father. Had that father been sober the boy would have 
been nestling in his bosom ; but he was drunk, and, seizing 
the little fellow by the shoulder, he lifted him right over his 
head and dashed him out of the second-story window, through 
sash, glass, and all ; and on the pavement below they picked 



"COYER IT UP, COVER IT UP." 579 

up the poor boy with both his thighs broken. That is another 
phase of the fact you laugh at, — that is, when a man is drunk 
he does not know what he is about, he has dethroned reason. 
And so, whether you laugh or cry at some of the follies of 
drunkenness, whether you hold your sides with merriment, or 
the marrow stands cold in your bones, remember that drunk- 
enness is blasting to everything that is noble. Young men, 
what an awful risk you run by intoxication ! Did you ever 
wake in the morning and wonder how you reached your bed ? 
Did you ever lie in the morning, unable to think, for the life 
of you, what you did or said the night before? Down on 
your knees, down on your knees, and thank God that as 
you staggered forth, not knowing what you were doing, He 
did not leave you to do that which would cover your 
whole life with gloom, as with a garment, or plunge you 
into utter ruin. Why, what is it to get drunk? Here is 
one case that I knew, and many of my friends were at the 
wedding, — a grand wedding. Fifteen hundred dollars were 
paid for the flowers, sent expressly from New York for the 
occasion. The house had been enlarged for the dancing. 
A fast young man and a beautiful girl were united. It 
was a gorgeous wedding, very merry and jolly, plenty of 
wine ; but the bridegroom became drunk, and, with his 
clenched fist, two hours after they had been married, he 
struck his bride in the mouth. " Hush ! hush ! " was the 
earnest request of friends. "Don't say anything about it, 
don't let it get abroad. Hush, hush ! it is known only 
to those here. He was drunk, and did not know what 
he was doing. Cover it up, cover it up." So they did. 
Six weeks afterward, on his wedding-trip, he was drunk again, 
and drew a pistol on his bride. She felt that her life was not 
safe, and went back to her father's house. He went directly 
to Toronto, Canada, became drunk again, killed a policeman^ 



580 



DRUNKARDS AND FOOLS. 



was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged in less 
than ninety days after his wedding. Friends interceded 
with the government, and he is now in Kingston peni- 
tentiary for life. Three drunks ! Three times intoxicated ! 

Oh, young men, if God 
has spared you, and you 
have never been drunk 
in your lives, down on 
your knees, and, in the 
gratitude of your souls, 
declare that you will 
never again touch that 
which may dethrone, 
reason. 

If I ask any young 
man who is in the 
habit of drinking, 
"Why do you drink?" 
it is probable his an- 
swer will be, in true 
Yankee style, " Why 
should I not drink?" If I should say, " Perhaps you 
may become a drunkard." "No fear of my becoming a 
drunkard. I 'm not such a fool as to become a drunkard, 
sir?" As if all were fools, in the common acceptation 
of that term, who had so degraded themselves ! I do not 
use the term fool in a moral or religious sense. All who 
commit wilful sin are fools. Are they all fools who become 
drunkards? Were all who became so during the last cen- 
tury, fools? There are men with minds so gigantic that 
they could "stand with one foot on the daisy while the 
other was lost among the dust of the stars," and yet 
their minds have been crippled by strong drink; men who 




FALSE AKGUMEKTS. 581 

might have showered great thoughts all round them, as the 
oak sheds a layer of golden leaves in autumn. Such men are 
more like drowsy bats, clinging to the dry limb of a dead 
tree, than like living souls. You say, " I have a mind, of my 
own, and can leave off when I like," — as if the poor wretch 
who has become a drunkard could not once say the same. 
You say, "I have more pride than to become a sot," — as if 
the drunkard did not once have pride as well as you ; as if he 
had not all the qualities necessary to constitute him a man, 
as well as you. All your arguments are false, young man, 
and you know it. 

In the temperance work we have great reason to thank 
God, and take courage. If this cause be of man, it will come 
to naught ; if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it. We 
judge of the righteousness of our cause by the results, and 
these are : The restoration of many drunkards to society, vir- 
tue, and religion ; the growing sentiment against social drink- 
ing, as a safeguard to the young ; the increased opposition to 
the liquor traffic. Therefore we will take courage, and work 
on, leaving the final results in the hands of Him in whose 
hands are the hearts of all men ; working, praying, hoping, 
and believing that, though we may not live to rejoice over the 
results, though we may see no green blade rising to bless our 
sight, we may in the better land welcome those who shall 
come laden with sheaves reaped upon the harvest-field we 
have been permitted to sow and pray over, but of which we 
have not been permitted to gather in the increase. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE REASON WHY — THE FIRST GLASS — RECOLLECTIONS 
OE MY FATHER — HUMOROUS STORIES. 

Our Standpoint — Opposition We Meet — An Obliging Blacksmith — Mj, 
Respect for Other People's Opinions — Power of Truth — What Makes 
Public Sentiment — Our Duty — A Funny Story as Told by Bishop 
Clark — A Disputed Question in Astronomy — A Laughable Incident — 
An Unnatural Appetite — The Struggle of a Lifetime — Why I Am 
Polite to Dogs — Giving the Curs a Wide Berth — My Dread of Hydro- 
phobia — What Rev. E. H. Chapin Said — Terrible Results of the First 
Glass — A Graphic Picture — Recollections of My Father — His Habit of 
Moderate Drinking — His Death at Ninety-four — Advice to Moderate 
Drinkers — An Infamous Example — The Man at the Top of the Church 
Spire — A Dangerous Position — "O Sandy, I'm havin' an Awfu 
Tumble " — A Physician's Story — Smoked to Death. 




HE whole range of argument 
in reference to the temper- 
ance question has been gone 
over again and again. I be- 
lieve all has been said on the 
subject that need be said, if 
those who hear would only 
according to their convictions, 
[t is a difficult matter to speak on 
temperance question, because we 
not stand on debatable ground. 
In every great enterprise it is neces- 
sary to lay down certain propositions, certain points upon 
which to base operations, and the difficulty has been to ob- 
tain the assent of the people to these necessary points. But 
there is no difficulty here in the temperance movement. To 

582 



A BLIGHTING CUESE. 583 

the first proposition which we lay down is yielded the con- 
scious, willing assent of every sane and reflecting mind 
among us ; namely, that drunkenness is a great evil. Is there 
any need of argument on this point ? Were I to occupy five 
minutes in endeavoring to prove that drunkenness was a 
blasting, blighting, debasing curse, I should be insulting your 
common sense. Were I to attempt to prove our second 
point, that it is every man's duty to do all he can to remove 
a common curse, every man's privilege to remove all the evil 
he possibly can, I should only be mocking you. My state- 
ment, viz., that degraded manhood, blackened characters, 
broken hearts, and lost souls, towering like monuments to 
the very heavens, are the results of drunkenness, will be 
accepted by every thoughtful and candid person. 

If this, then, be the general conviction, that drunkenness 
is a curse and that it is every man's duty to remove a curse, 
we have the consciences of the whole people at the start ; but 
many are satisfied with their assent to our statements, and do 
nothing more than assent. I would not give a snap of my 
finger for a man's smile, or a fig for his God-speed, or a copper 
for all his good wishes, unless he help me. I am not now en- 
deavoring to convince you, — you are already convinced; but 
what I hope to do, God helping me, is to say something that 
shall stir you to action. 

The fact is, we have but very little tangible opposition to 
contend with. Sneering ridicule of our principles, con- 
temptuous allusions to our movement, we care nothing for. 
We say of them just what a big blacksmith said of his wife. 
He was about six feet tall and broad in proportion, and 
he had a vixen of a wife — a little bit of a thing — who used 
to flog him most unmercifully. Some one said to him, 
"Well, now, if I was as big a fellow as you, I would not 
stand that ; I 'd let that spiteful little wretch know her 



584 



AN ACCOMMODATING HUSBAND. 



place. I 'd soon let her see that I would be master." " Oh," 
said he, " let her alone, let her alone ; she 's a poor little 
thing, and it gratifies her a good deal and don't hurt me a 
bit." So we say of men who sneer, — let them sneer until the 
lip grows rigid with the curl they put upon it, let them speak 

contemptuously of our 
movement, we do not 
mind it a particle ; we be- 
lieve we have the best of 
the argument and that 
all the facts are on our 
side. 

Bold, open, manly op- 
position we meet but sel- 
dom. We have arguments 
occasionally, but some of 
them forcibly remind me 
of a celebrated divine who 
said : " There is only one 
man in Germany who un- 
derstands my doctrine, 
and he don't understand 
it." I maintain that a 
man has a right to his 
own opinion. I would 
give but little for the man who has not an opinion of his 
own, and far less for him who, when he has an opinion, 
lacks the courage to utter or defend it. If a man differs 
from me in opinion, I can still respect him. I can fight 
with a man with all my heart, and love him ; I can " shake 
hands with him and box him afterwards." It does not de- 
stroy nor diminish my respect for him because he does not 
agree with me. Why, some very good men do not agree 




AN OBLIGING HUSBAND. 



THE POWER OF TRUTH. 585 

with me ; am I then to despise them ? If any man takes his 
ground in opposition to me, I can battle him with all the 
intellectual power God has given me, and hug him with all 
the physical power I possess, and feel that he is not the less a 
brother. But the man who has not the moral courage to 
declare the principles he has adopted, who will not state 
which side he is on, saying to one, " I am with you," and to 
another, " I am with you," sometimes one thing, sometimes 
another, — such a man I hold in supreme contempt. 

There are only two* ways in which we can be opposed, — 
by falsehood and by truth. If a position is maintained by 
falsehood, what then ? Why, we bring truth to oppose the 
falsehood. As John Milton has said : " Let the truth and 
the falsehood grapple ; truth never was worsted in an encoun- 
ter with falsehood." Let the truth be placed upon the 
scaffold with the halter about its neck, and falsehood be 
seated on the throne ; let the truth be clothed in the rags 
of poverty, munching her dry crust, and falsehood be clad 
in rich apparel, feasting sumptuously; there would still be 
"beautiful angels standing around the truth," and within the 
" dim shadows God himself keeps watch over his own." Our 
cause is a good one ; it is to be advanced and consolidated by 
the power of the truth ; and when we unfurl and give to the 
breeze the banner of triumph, it is by the power of the truth. 
It is truth acting on the minds of the people that is manufac- 
turing that public sentiment which is gathering strength as it 
rolls through the valleys ; and the mountains are preparing 
to take up and toss from summit to summit the glorious 
tidings, " The land is free from the curse of drunkenness." 

Now, oelieving in, and acting upon, the principle that it is 
our duty to do all that we can to remove an evil, and believ- 
ing that the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage is not 
only needless, but hurtful to the social, civil, and religious 



586 A DISPUTED QUESTION IN ASTRONOMY. 

interests of the community, and that, while its use as a bever- 
age is continued, the evils of drunkenness will never be 
destroyed, we agree that we will not use it as a beverage, nor 
traffic in it, nor provide it for others, and that we will dis- 
countenance its use throughout the community ; thus, stand- 
ing in an attitude of antagonism to the use of the drink, 
whether at the sideboard of the wealthy, in the social circle, 
or in the dram-shop, we advocate, maintain, and defend the 
principle of total abstinence as a lawful principle, a sensible 
principle, and one which, if universally adopted, would roll 
back the tide of intemperance from this land forever. 

I have said that every man has a right to object, and we 
have a right to meet his objections if we do it in a spirit of 
courtesy. It is difficult to obtain the objections of indivi- 
duals to our position. I acknowledge that the man who is 
always contradicting you is a very disagreeable person, but, 
to my thinking, a more disagreeable person still is he who is 
always agreeing with you. I would rather live in a house 
with a man or woman who contradicted every word I said 
than with a man or woman who agreed with me in every- 
thing. Such persons are never able to come to any decision. 
They remind me of a story Bishop Clark of Rhode Island 
told me of two men coming home about two o'clock in the 
morning in a maudlin state of intoxication. As they stag- 
gered along, one said : " Don't you think the sun is 
shining very brilliantly?" "Sun," said the other, "that 
ishn't the sun; that'sh the moon." "No," said the first, 
" it 's the sun," and so they discussed together until a little 
ill-temper began to manifest itself. Finally, they agreed to 
leave the matter to the first person they should meet. Soon 
after, a man came along, but unfortunately he was in the 
same condition as themselves. " I say, old fellow, here 's a 
d'shpute, and we want you to shettle it, and be an umpire and 



AN AWFUL LEGACY. 



587 



ref'ree. Now, you jusht look where I'm pointing, and the 
question ish, ish that the sun, or ish it the moon ? " After 
looking upward in a maudlin way for a few minutes, he said : 
" Ish it the sun, or ish it the moon ? Well, gen'l'men, you 
must 'scuse me, I 'm a stranger in this part of the country." 

A gentleman 
said to me (for I 
must meet the 
objections that 
come before me), 
"Your name, 
'temperance socie- 
ty,' is a misnomer. 
It should be ' total 
abstinence socie- 
ty ; ' yours are tee- 
total societies, not 
temperance socie- 
ties." Why, what 
is the definition of 
the word " temper- 
ance?" It is a 
lawful gratifi- 
cation of a natu- 
ral appetite. Is 
the appetite for 
intoxicating liquors a natural one ? No ! No man ever came 
into the world with an appetite for intoxicating drinks, except 
in those cases (rare, thank God !) where the sins of the fathers 
are visited upon the children, and a child comes into the world 
with an hereditary tendency to drink. The habit of using 
intoxicating liquors is an acquired one, just as the habit of 
using tobacco is. Did you ever hear of a child crying for a quid 




TWO o'clock in the morning, "ish it the 

SUN OR ISH IT THE MOON ?" 



588 A MINISTER'S EXPERIENCE. 

of tobacco or a pipe ? It does not want it. No man ever 
wanted liquor who had not used it ; the want is created by 
the use, except, I say, in those fearful cases referred to. 
Once in a while I come across such, and I hold them up as 
a warning to those parents who may be sowing the seeds of 
an awful appetite in the systems of their children. 

A minister of the gospel wrote me a letter describing his suf- 
ferings from the craving of an hereditary appetite, and asked . 
"Is there no hope for me on this side the grave?" And all I 
could do was to write him that the grandest sight on the face 
of the earth was a man wrestling with a hereditary tendency 
to evil ; all good angels were with him, the Saviour of man- 
kind sympathized with him, and the victory would be certain 
if he only persevered ; and the crown would be so much the 
more glorious for the terrible struggle of his lifetime. The 
appetite for strong drink is, with such rare exceptions, pro- 
duced by the use of the article which the man craves. 

But you say : " All who drink do not become drunkards." 
I know that ; but a minority of those who drink become 
what we call drunkards. " There is no necessity for a drinker 
of intoxicating liquors to become a drunkard." I care not 
for the necessity ; some of them will ; by all past experience 
we know they will. Fill a room with young men, and let 
each man as he passes out declare, "I will be a moderate 
drinker ; I will exercise self-denial and control myself ; I will 
drink in moderation, and never to excess ; " take pen, ink, 
and paper, and you can make about as correct a calculation 
of the proportion of those young men who will become 
drunkards, as life insurance companies can of the death-rate 
of the insured. Is it reasonable to encourage drinking on 
the ground that not all who drink are ruined ? A mad dog 
is tearing down the streets, foaming at the mouth and snap- 
ping his teeth. You say, " Kill him ; " I ask you why ; you 



A TERRIBLE DISEASE. 589 

tell me he is mad. "What if he is mad? He is one of God's 
good creatures, let him run." " Yes, but he will bite some- 
body." "How do you^know? He may bite nobody, and 
surely he cannot bite everybody; let him run." No, you 
destroy the dog, because there is a risk. Some one may be 
bitten, and the dread of hydrophobia is so great that you kill 
the dog for absolute safety. t 

Hydrophobia is an awful disease. I remember, when quite 
a boy, of reading a description of the death of a man by 
hydrophobia, and it made such an impression on my mind 
that I have ever given dogs a wide berth. I am very polite 
to a dog. I give him either side of the path, as he may 
choose, and if he lies directly in my way, I go round him 
rather than disturb him. I have more than once declined vis- 
iting a friend for fear of his dog, and I generally ask my host, 
" Have you a dog here ? " If he tells me he has, I inquire, 
" Does he bite ? " And then I am on my guard and avoid 
coming in contact with the animal as much as possible. More 
than once a strange dog has come near me with a snarl, and 
I have said very softly, " Dear old fellow," when I would 
rather have shot the beast. If I should ever be bitten by a 
dog, I should hardly be free from apprehension the rest of 
my days. The terror and dread of that horrible disease 
would worry me into a nervous fever. And yet, with my 
personal knowledge of drunkenness, with my experience with 
others, I would rather stand steady while you set upon me 
the maddest dog that ever ran in your streets, and I would 
permit him to tear the flesh from my limbs, rather, I say, than 
become that pitiful thing, a confirmed drunkard. Hydropho- 
bia is something awful to me; I know what the other thing is. 

I once heard Rev. E. H. Chapin say, in Tremont Temple, 
Boston, with his hand lifted, in his earnestness, " Would to 
God that the first drop of intoxicating liquor a man should 



590 SOCIETY'S CURSE. 

take into his system would produce in him at once the result 
of years of drunkenness." I thought that was a shocking 
utterance ; but when I comprehended his full meaning, I said, 
Amen. For if the awful penalty came with the first glass, if 
the pain of reaction came before the pleasure of the stimulus, 
no man ^ould drink, no father would dare to give strong 
drink to his child, no mother would offer it to her babe. 
The drinking customs of the civilized world would come to 
an end in twenty-four hours. Now it is because some people 
can and do drink, that we appeal to every one. 

Is not drunkenness so to be dreaded that society should be 
willing and ready to make some sacrifice to remove the cause 
that is producing such disastrous results, by adopting the safe 
course of abstinence? No man ever intends to become a 
drunkard. No man ever took a glass in his hand, and apos- 
trophized it thus : " Here I stand, in vigor and health, with 
fine physical development and high ambition. I have a mother 
who loves me tenderly, a wife and children who cling to me 
with loving affection. I am respectable and respected. My 
ambition is high, my hopes are bright. Now with this I will 
ruin my health ; with this I will blast my prospects ; with 
this I will stain my reputation ; with this I will destroy my 
manliness; with this I will break my mother's heart; with 
this I will bring disgrace on wife, children, and all who love 
me; with this I will burn out the last principle of vitality 
from a poor, half-putrefied carcass, and men shall sweep me 
away with the pitiful leavings of a dram-shop, and in after 
years shall speak of me with bated breath, for ' the memory 
of the wicked shall rot.' Now I will take my first step to 
just such a consummation by taking my first glass." No 
man would be such a consummate fool. And yet men are 
doing these very things, doing them here, doing them every- 
where ; ay, bringing woe and horror and cursing into their 



CHRISTIAN MODERATE DRINKERS. 591 

own souls and into their own families, greater than the mind 
of man can conceive. 

To return to the statement that all who drink do not be 
come drunkards. I acknowledge that there are some men 
who can drink moderately, — and there are others who cannot. 
We know there are respectable, moral, God-fearing, Christian, 
moderate drinkers. My father was a moderate drinker all his 
life. He drank his glass of ale every day at dinner, and 
every night at supper, when he could get it, and occasionally, 
as a rare treat, a glass of hot spirits-and-water, generally on 
the day when he received his pension, — once in three months, 
— that being a high day, and a long-looked-for occasion. My 
father never was known to be intoxicated, and he was a man 
who was very indignant at, and had no patience with, any 
man who, to use his own expression, drank more than was 
good for him. He was a Christian moderate drinker, and died 
aged ninety-four years. A gentleman to whom I related the 
fact of my father's moderation, said he thought that was an 
argument against my position, and an encouragement to 
drinkers. As much so as the man to whom I was introduced 
in Washington, who was eighty-eight years of age, who had 
had three bullets in his body since 1812, or nearly seventy 
years, was an encouragement to any young man to get three 
bullets in his body that he might live to be eighty-eight. Now 
while my father could be a moderate drinker, his son could 
no more be a moderate drinker than he could blow up a pow- 
der magazine moderately, or fire a gun off gradually, or do 
any other impossible thing. " Ah, then," say you, " you are 
a weak-minded man." Very well, let it go at that ; but if I 
am so weak-minded that I cannot drink in moderation, thank 
God I am strong enough to let it alone altogether. 

Let me say a few words to moderate drinkers, because they 
are the hardest cases to persuade we have to deal with. They 



592 ^^ INFAMOUS EXAMPLE. 

have lost no reputation, they are not injured in health or 
property, their gloss of respectability is not dimmed, no ap- 
parent injury (I leave the internal injury to the physiologists), 
comes to them by the use of intoxicating liquor, and there- 
fore they say, " Why should I sign your total abstainer's 
pledge? I never drink enough to hurt me." And if we get 
them to sign our pledge, or adopt our principle, they must 
do it in a large-hearted spirit of self-denying benevolence; 
must do it for the sake of others, — and that is the highest 
motive, in my opinion, that can move a man to do it. 

What I want to say to the moderate drinker is this : You 
make one great mistake in setting up your example as a GOOD 
one ; and there is your mistake. Now I say to you, Drink, if 
you will, drink if you must, drink till you die ; but do not 
dare to tell young men around you that you set them a good 
example by your drinking. What is a good example? It 
is an example that young men can follow in safety. You 
say, " If young men do as I do." Ah ! if they do. 

I remember once seeing in a town in New York State a 
very beautiful spire of a new church, and just about ten feet 
from " the ball " a plank was pushed out, with ropes over the 
ends of it. The plank was let down, and the ropes were 
fastened inside of the window. There was a platform, — 
perhaps five or six feet from this little window, and one hun- 
dred and fifty feet above the roadway. I saw a man get out 
of that window and stand on that little platform. Could you 
do it ? He spoke to a man on the sidewalk. The man called 
up to him, and he stooped over the plank, with his hand upon 
his knee, and replied to the man upon the pavement. Now I 
know that if I had undertaken to stand on that plank, the 
very moment my foot touched it, and I saw the awful depth 
beneath, ah ! I should have gone down more swiftly than the 
man who fell out of the eleventh-story window, and, passing a 



A FALL FEOM AN ELEVENTH STORY WINDOW. 



593 



friend looking out of the fourth story, said, " Oh, Sandy, I'm 
hayin' an awfu' tumble." There would have been no mind, 
no intellect, no genius, no will, no power on earth that could 
have saved me. I must have fallen; to have stood firm would 
have been to me plrysi- 
cally impossible. Now 
you might, perhaps, stand 
there ; but suppose that in 
so standing you tell me 
you set me a good exam- 
ple. I say to you, " Stand 
there, if you like, I have 
no objection. You may 
stand there from now 
till to-morrow morning, 
or, like Simon Stylites, 
on his pillar, for thirty 
years ; but do not tell me 
you set me a good exam- 
ple." You tell me, 
" Why, I stand here per- 
fectly safe ; " and you in- 
duce me to try and follow 
your example, and I fall. 
What then? Are not 
your hands stained with 
my blood ? Can you get 
away from that? "It 
must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by 
whom the offence cometh." If you stand there safely 
yourself, and induce me to stand there, and I fall, what 
then? Why, you say I am "weak-headed." Well, then, by 
God's help I will keep off the plank ; that 's all. I tell you, 




'oh, sandy, i'm havin' an 
awfu' tumble." 



594 



FIGHTIXG A PLUG OF TOBACCO. 



sir, and I tell you, madam, that every one, from the begin- 
ning, who has become a drunkard, has become so by trying to 
be a moderate drinker. 

But you say, " they are weak-minded." It tells of more 
mind, more strength of will, more firmness of purpose, more 
decision of character, to break a bad habit than it does to 
acquire one. I knew a man who under- 
took to give up the use of tobacco. He 
put his hand in his pocket, took out his 
plug of tobacco, and threw it away, say- 
ing as he did so, " That 's the end of it." 
But it was the beginning of it. Oh, 
how he did want it ! He would lick 
his lips, he would chew chamomile flow- 
ers, he would chew gentian, he would 
chew toothpicks, quills, anything to 
keep his jaws going ; no use, he suffered 
intensely, nothing satisfying him. After 
enduring the craving for thirty-six or 
forty-eight hours, he made up his mind, 
" Now it is of no use suffering for a bit of 
tobacco, I will go and get some." So he 
purchased another plug, and put it in his 
pocket. " Now," he said, " when I want 

it awfully, I '11 take some." Well, he did want it awfully, 
and he said he believed that it was God's good spirit that was 
striving with him as he held the tobacco in his hand. Look- 
ing at it, and smelling it, he said " I love you, and I want you, 
but are you my master, or am I yours ? That is the question 
I mean to settle. You are a weed, and I am a man. You are 
a Mng, and I am a man. You black devil, I '11 master you, if 
I die for it. It never shall be said of me again, 'there is a 
man mastered by a thing.' I love you, but I will fight you." 




I WILL FIGHT YOU, 



TO LOVERS OF THE WEED. 



595 



Every time he wanted it, he would take it out and talk to it. 
It was six or eight weeks before he could throw it away, and 
feel easy. But he said the glory of the victory repaid him 
for his struggle. 

We are told that it is harder to give up tobacco than it is 
to give up drink. It may be in certain cases. Here is a young 
man, for instance: '.' Charley, have 
a glass of ale ? " " No, I don 't care 
for it; I'll take a cigar." And if 
a man drinks his glass of ale only 
once or twice a week, but takes 
cigars eight or ten times a 
day, he has the tobacco ap- 
petite, and it will be harder 
for that man to 
give up the ci- 
gars and the J 
tobacco than 
the drink. The 
love of tobacco 
is a very strong 
love ; you know 
that. Ay, and 
so do I. A phy- 
sician in Halifax told me that he had a patient who would use 
tobacco. " Tobacco is killing you," he said to him. It made 
no difference ; he smoked his pipe still. At last a tobacco- 
cancer came upon his lip. " Now," said the physician, " you 
are feeding that by your tobacco." No use ; he would smoke. 
An operation was performed, and a painful one, and, said the 
physician, " I told him I would call in next morning ; and, 
twenty-four hours after that operation, I found him propped up 
in bed, with his face bound up on one side, and a pipe in the 




A TOUGH PATIENT. 



596 AN UNFORTUNATE SMOKER. 

other side of his mouth." Some years since I was acquainted 
with a young man, doing a fine business in one of our large 
cities, who smoked incessantly. He told me that he used 
from twenty to twenty-five cigars each day. He generally 
smoked one or two before breakfast, and often smoked after 
he went to bed. I told him, then, that he would kill himself. 
He laughed, and said, " I am a hard smoker, and I guess it is 
hurting me." A short time since I inquired for him. The 
reply to the question was, " Dead ; smoked himself to death." 
Now, it is "mighty hard," as we say, to break off a habit 
of smoking, or of using tobacco ; but when the appetite for 
drink lays hold of a man, what then ? Do you know what it 
is? Some do. The crying, burning, itching sense. As a 
man said to me, using a homely expression, " I felt as if I had 
an irritating itch in my stomach, and could not get at it." 
If these statements concerning this terrible appetite are true, 
is not total abstinence sensible and right ? We believe it is ; 
and we advocate it in the hope and faith that by and by 
the drinking customs will be banished from our dear country 
forever. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

AGENTS OF THE DEVIL — HOW LIQUOR-SELLERS MAKE 
PAUPERS, FEED JAILS, AND INCITE CRIME. 

A Truthful Sign-board — Specimens of the Liquor-seller's Work — A Remi- 
niscence of Other Days — A Pitiable Spectacle — Placing a Drunkard oq 
Exhibition at a Fair — Fruit of the Dram-Shop — Protecting the Rum- 
seller — Fearful Responsibility — Remarkable Offer of P. T. Barnuni — 
Stubborn Facts — Startling Figures — Sad Results — Haunts of Vice — 
Where Criminals and Paupers Come From — Hot-beds of Crime — A Sug- 
gestive Incident — Empty Jails — Terrible Scenes — Newgate Prison — 
A Pocket With a Hole in It — An Incident of London Life — Sunday 
Scene at the Seven Dials — Watching the Door of "The Grapes" — A 
Wretched Crowd — Disgraceful Scenes — A Terrible Threat Against My 
Life — Amusing Incident — Recalling My Dark Days — A Faithful Wife — 
"John, Don't be Soft" — Incident of the Great Coal Strike — How to 
Blot Out the Curse. 

IGOROUS opposition of- the 
liquor-dealers to the temper- 
ance movement is natural, and 
to be expected, for we war 
against their pecuniary inter- 
ests; and if you touch some 
men in the pocket, you touch 
them where they live. Were these 
men to exhibit at their places of busi- 
ness a truthful signboard, it would 
read : " Delirium tremens, fever, dis- 
ease, pauperism, crime, redness of eyes, wounds without 
cause, rags, wretchedness, despair, and death, for sale 

HERE* 

That would be a truthful sign, but it would injure their 
business more than all the temperance organizations in 

507 




598 



AN HONEST ADVERTISEMENT. 



existence. The liquor-seller will not even set up in his bar- 
room a specimen of his work ; he puts up blinds at the doors 
and screens at the windows to hide his work from the passers 
by ; but the shoemaker and the tailor exhibit their work in 
their windows, and 
show what they have 
made out of the raw 
material. 

The tailor, when 
he has finished a new 
coat, places it where 
it may be seen by the 
greatest number of 
customers ; when the 
shoemaker has fin- 
ished a first-class pair 
of boots, he places 
them in his window, 
because the exhibi- 
tion tends to increase 
his trade. With the 
liquor-seller it is quite 
different. He is 
ashamed of his fin- 
ished work ; with him 
the raw material is 
always worth more than the finished article. Were he 
to exhibit that, he would lose his trade. No wonder he is 
ashamed to exhibit his work. 

In the world's great exhibitions you have seen finished 
articles of nearly every manufacture, from a tooth-pick 
to a locomotive, and the exhibitors were anxious to ex- 
plain the method of manufacture, or the texture of the 




A TEUTHFUL SIGN. 



A GOOD SPECIMEN. 



599 



woven fabrics. Almost every conceivable specimen of man's 
ingenuity and skill was there represented, — from the raw 
material to the finished article. But there was one specimen 
of manufacture absent. I remember, at the Mechanics' Fair 
in Boston, many years ago, being struck with this fact, and 
on mentioning it to Deacon 
Moses Grant, he proposed to 
&pply to the managers for 
permission to exhibit a speci- 
men of the liquor-seller's 
work. He knew a man who 
was once worth 140,000, who 
was then debased and ruined 
through drink, who agreed 
for a dollar a day to stand in 
that fair with a label in front 
of him, which read as follows : 
"I was once worth $40,000. 
I was once respected and 
respectable. I once moved in 
good society. Such things as 
I am now are made out of such 
men as I once was. Please 
give us a premium for one of 
the best specimens to be 
found in this city." But they would not admit him ! The 
liquor-seller is ashamed of the results of his infamous trade. 
A boy was passing by a liquor-shop, and seeing a drunken 
man lying in the gutter in front of the saloon, knocked at the 
door, and said : " Mister, your sign 's fell down ; " and the 
angry liquor-seller chased him half round the square. 

See the results of this traffic in its true colors, placed so 
full and fair before you that the very youngest cannot err in 




I Was Once Worth '$ 40.000. 

JJWAS ONCE RESPECTED AHU RESPECTABLE. 

I Once moved in GooDSocint 

SUCH THINGS AS I AM HOW ARE. MADE 
OUT OF SUCH MEN A% 1 ONCE WAS." 

ON EXHIBITION. 



600 A REMINISCENCE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

their decision. A liquor-seller had a tavern undergoing re- 
pairs. One day a boy came running to his mother, crying out, 
" Mother, mother ! " " What is it, my boy ? " " Mr. Poole's 
tavern is finished, mother." " How do you know, my dear ? " 
inquired the mother. " Why, I saw a man come out drunk ! " 
Now, that is the legitimate fruit of the dram-shop. 

We do not fear opposition. But there is that which is 
worse than opposition, and more to be dreaded, — the uni- 
versal apathy that exists in reference to drunkenness. There 
is no evil tolerated and borne with as the evil of drunkenness. 
There is none which is so mischievous ; and yet it is per- 
mitted to remain. Did hydrophobia produce one half of the 
fearful results that drink does, there would not be a living 
dog left in the Avhole country ; the pet dog of the lady, the 
hunting dog of the sportsman, without reference to owner- 
ship or value, would be promptly destroyed. 

If there is aught producing disease and death in your 
city, you remove it, and remove it instantly, at whatever cost. 
I remember well, when cholera entered the city of New York 
in 1832, what care was taken, what efforts were made to check 
its progress. Bonfires of tar-barrels, blazing at the corners of 
the streets, shed a lurid glare over the awful scene. Chloride 
of lime was used in fumigating and whitewashing the lanes and 
alleys and was thrown over the piles of coffins as they were 
taken to the " Potter's Field ; " all large assemblies were for- 
bidden ; and it seemed as if the angel of death had spread his 
broad, black wings over the entire city and its doomed popu- 
lation. Men prayed and mourned before God. They did 
more than that. They were up and doing, and removing, as 
far as possible, at whatever hazard, and at whatever cost, the 
cause of the disease. Physicians demanded that no fruit 
should be eaten, nor green vegetables used. The authorities 
entered the market places, seized all the pine-apples, green 



PROTECTING A DISHONORABLE TRADE. 601 

corn, and vegetables, and carted them away and tumbled 
them into the river, for the good of society. What a sum- 
mary proceeding ! some might say. But was it not right ? 
A man might eat himself into spasmodic cholera in six hours 
if he chose, and the law would not interfere with him ; but 
the law did prevent him from tempting his weak and ignorant 
neighbor to purchase in the market that which might kill 
him. 

That was right ; but what do you do with drink, the cause 
of disease, death, crime, and poverty ? You build bridewells, 
almshouses, penitentiaries, and erect the gallows for the 
effect. But what do you with the cause ? You support and 
patronize it, legislate for it, protect it by law, and make it 
honorable. A man who, when sober, is inoffensive and will 
not injure anyone, but when drunk is a perfect fiend, a devil, 
fire in his blood, fire in his brain, enters a dram-shop sober, 
and reels out on the streets drunk, ripe for every mischief. 
He goes home and beats out the brains of his wife. You 
apprehend him, try him, and condemn him to death ; and if 
he be not pardoned, or the sentence commuted, he is hanged. 
And pray what do you do to the man who sold him the liquor ? 
You license him. What do you do with the shop where he 
obtained the liquor? You protect it by law. What do you 
do with the business ? You stamp it with the impress of re- 
spectability. You make it honorable. 

You pay for that traffic more than you pay for religion r 
education, and, I believe, government, all put together. If 
you will not believe this, just investigate. Why, I believe 
you would save money to pension the liquor-sellers, giving 
them a handsome sum to live upon, on condition that they 
close their saloons and sell no more drink. Mr. P. T. Barnum 
once said in Tripler Hall, before an audience of about four 
thousand people : — 



602 A KEMARKABLE OFFER. 

" I am ready to make an agreement with the mayor, and 
aldermen, and city council of New York, that, if they will give 
me the money expended in intoxicating liquor in this city, I 
will pay the whole pauper tax ; I will give a barrel of flour 
to every family ; I will give a library of a hundred volumes 
to every family ; I will give as handsome a suit of broadcloth 
as can be picked out to every man and boy, and a handsome 
silk dress to every woman and girl in the city, old or young, 
rich or poor, little or big ; I will give one million dollars for 
the privilege ; and I will give the whole city a free admission 
to the American Museum ; and then I find that I should clear 
about eight million dollars by the transaction." 

There is a disposition on the part of some people to dis- 
believe the facts brought forward by temperance reformers. 
Give to such a one a list of the crimes, diseases, pauperism, 
lunacy, and loss of life and property, caused by drunkenness ; 
put into his hands some of the elaborate statistics issued on 
this subject ; give him such a paper, and as soon as he per- 
ceives its object, — " Pooh, pooh, why this is a temp — fanati- 
cal sort of statement." Fanaticism, fanaticism ! how it does 
hurt some people. The softer a man's head is, the easier is 
he impressed with this word. It is a bugbear to frighten 
people. A man once said that this opposition to the drink 
was pure, clear, unadulterated fanaticism. I said : " What 
do you mean by fanaticism ? " " Why, I mean fanaticism, 
that's what I mean." "Yes, but what is fanaticism?" 
" Fanaticism, — it 's — well ; fanaticism is, — oh, you know 
what fanaticism is as well as I do." He did not understand 
the meaning of the word that scared him. 

The people of these United States paid to one hundred 
and sixty thousand retail liquor-dealers in 1874, according to 
the statement of Dr. Young, chief of the Bureau of Statistics, 
$800,000,000, besides $400,000,000 for the crime, and poverty, 



HOW PAUPERS AND CRIMINALS ARE MADE. 603 

and the huge machinery required to take care of the results 
of their traffic, — and for what ? Not for bread, but for that 
winch makes every loaf of bread dearer to every consumer. 
Not for meat, but for that which decreases the business in all 
healthful food. Not for houses and furniture, because it is 
notorious that the best customers not only waste and destroy 
houses and furniture, but are content to live in hovels. Not 
for anything that prolongs life, but for that which notoriously 
shortens it. Not for the support of schools and colleges, but 
for what cripples them. Not for foreign or home travel, but 
for what prevents it. Not for making travel a secure delight, 
but for that which endangers it. Not for that which lessens 
or equalizes taxation, but for that most disheartening result, 
the enlargement of prisons, the multiplying of places for the 
helplessness, the needless sickness, the preventible misfor- 
tunes, the unprincipled vagrancy, the brutal crimes, that all 
the property you and I possess has to be levied on to pay for. 
[t scatters no beauty or blessing in a single home, for it 
menaces and blights all things lovely that it touches. It 
gives no cool brain and just judgment, for it is an admitted 
foe to these. It hinders no legislative wrongs, but is a factor 
in most of them. It holds back no murderous hand, but 
nerves it ; it helps nowhere in paying debts, but is always 
and everywhere the frustrator of honest intentions. 

Fancy the building of jails, almshouses, lunatic asylums, 
reformatories, and a score of kindred receptacles for the re- 
sults of the grain trade, the builders' trade, the coal trade, or 
any other business on the earth but this. Think of support- 
ing a large body of men, at the public expense, to take care 
of the refuse and do the work of scavengers for any business 
on earth but this. And yet you know that the principal busi- 
ness of the police force is taking care of the results, carrying 
away, out of sight, the refuse of the liquor shops. Mr. Chand- 



604 HOW JAILS AND ALMSHOUSES MAY BE CLOSED. 

ler, formerly editor of the "United States Gazette," said, 
" Close the grog-shops, and all the poverty could be supported 
by the present existing private charities, and in this republic 
there need not be an almshouse." Yes, close the liquor-shops, 
and three fourths of our prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, 
and houses of correction might be converted into colleges, 
institutions of learning, or, at any rate, make room for some- 
thing more profitable to the community. Close the liquor- 
shops, and the police would have little to do. Where do they 
seek for the burglar, the thief, the garrotter ! Where but in 
these hotbeds of crime, the liquor-shops ? Think of hunting 
for criminals in any other place ! Inquire, if you will, of every 
warden of every prison in the country, and you receive the 
same reply: "Most — yes, nearly all — of the crime directly 
results from drink." 

A year before the Maine law was passed, the mayor of 
Portland proposed that the House of Correction should be 
enlarged. On the next 1st of April he told the Common 
Council that they need not enlarge it, for it was empty and 
to let, not having a prisoner in it ; that from the 25th of 
October to the last of March there had not been one commit- 
ment. In every prison I have visited, I find the same state- 
ments, here and abroad. The governor of York Castle, Eng- 
land, told me, " If it was not for the drink, we should have 
nothing to do here." One of the officers of Bodmin jail, in 
Cornwall, told me, " If it was not for the drink, we should be 
empty here." The same in hospitals, insane retreats, " If it 
was not for the drink." 

But come up from these things, which are mostly outside 
and material, and step higher. Try to reckon, if you can, the 
sum of physical pain that runs along the exquisite nerves of 
sensation from this business. Number, if you can, the awful 
surprises that come to those within the range of its temp- 



IN A MURDERER'S CELL. 



605 



taiions and specious invitations. In a county in New York, a 
man of worth, whose only failing seemed to be occasional 
intoxication, was tempted to drink in one of these places. 
From one drink to another he continued, until, in the madness 




A TERRIBLE REALITT 



of it, he went home, and, that evening, struck his wife blows 
that killed her. He was at once arrested, and his first waking 
from that madness was to open his eyes on prison bars. 

" Why, where am I ? Is this a jail ? " 

" Yes," was the keeper's reply. 

" What am I here for?" 



606 CONFESSIONS OF LIQUOR-SELLERS. 

" Do n't you know ? " 

"I know I was never in a jail before. Have I been kick' 
ing up a row? What am I here for? tell me." 

" You are here for murder." 

" What, have I killed somebody ? " 

"You have." 

" Oh ! what shall I do? Tell me, does my wife know it?" 

" Why, it is your wife you have murdered." 

He fell in a dead faint, and, though the keeper of that 
prison was licensed to sell, and the sheriff owned the liquor- 
shop where he obtained the drink, they were not even blamed, 
and the prisoner must pay the penalty, and bear the guilt 
alone. You and I know that such things are, alas, not rare. 
I do not say it was unjust that the man should be held 
responsible for his own acts, but what other business in this 
country could be fruitful, yes, fruitful, of such results ? 

Again, can you compute the number of true and good wo- 
men, who, in tears and shame and unremitting toil, in broken 
health and unutterable sadness, fade, suffer, and die, because 
those they love can get intoxicating liquors so easily ? Can 
you count the little ones who can never look back to a rosy 
mist of happy childhood, who can never lean, in life's battles, 
on fair memories of pleasant homes, but who early gain that 
dreadful condition — to expect nothing better? Oh, it is a 
dreadful business ! the more profit, the more damage to the 
people. Even liquor-sellers acknowledge it to be an evil. A 
liquor-seller in Glasgow said to me, after I had spoken of the 
traffic very sharply, " It is all true ; and, although I am en- 
gaged in the business, I wish whiskey was five guineas a gal- 
lon, and every smuggler hung." 

Many a man engaged in the trade has told me, "It is a bad 
business ; " or, " It is not the best business that ever was ; " 
or, " I would like to get out of it, but I cannot make the sac- 



AN INFAMOUS BUSINESS. 607 

rifice." It is not considered a very respectable business. 
Suppose I tell you, " There is a minister of the gospel, largely 
engaged in manufacturing or mining." " Ah," you say, "in- 
deed?" "Yes, he has had property left to him by his wife, 
and he is very largely connected with the business, and draws 
an income from it ; but it does not necessarily detract from 
his usefulness." " No," you say, " I suppose not." But if I 
tell you that the reverend gentleman is largely engaged in 
the liquor business, you say, " That is rather inconsistent." 
That is just what we say. And now if it is inconsistent for 
a minister to be engaged in drawing revenue from this busi- 
ness, if it is a business in which a Christian cannot be engaged 
consistently, — at any rate he cannot ask God to bless him in 
putting the bottle to his neighbor's lips (I have heard men, at 
family-worship, pray for success in their business; but no 
liquor-seller dares ask God's blessing on his trade), — then 
what kind of business is it ? If I were simply to give my 
opinion of the subject, I should merely say of the liquor 
business, that I hate it ; I hate it with a perfect hatred. I 
love to hate it ; it does me good to hate it. I feel that when 
I hate it I am doing God service, and I expect to hate it as 
long as I live ; and I pray God to give me an everlastingly 
increasing capacity to hate it. I consider it to be a useless 
business, an unutterably mean business, an intolerably wicked 
business, a soul-destroying, God-defying business. 

I stood in front of Newgate, some years ago, in London, 
soon after the body of the wretched Mobbs, the murderer, was 
cut down, and all round, in the beer-shops and gin-shops, were 
crowds of poor, miserable wretches, drinking the fiery fluid. 
It was a horrible sight ; and I was told by a gentleman who 
knew the matter perfectly, " These men have been driving a 
better business since five o'clock this morning than they have 
any other morning since the last execution. There they are, 
37 



608 AN EMPTY POCKET WITH SOMETHING IN IT. 

furnishing more victims to be judicially strangled on the 
gallows." 

The trade is useless, too. It benefits nobody but the 
liquor-seller, and him only in a pecuniary point of view. A 
curse appears to rest upon the trade; it does not seem to 
thrive, for we can scarcely find a fortune ever descending 
to the second and third generations, that has been made by 
dealing out intoxicating liquors. 

A man once said : " Why, when I was a drinking man I 
had an empty pocket with something in.it all the time." 
Somebody said : " How could you have an empty pocket with 
something in it ? " " Well," he said, " I had a big hole in it, 
and all my money went through that big hole, and I never 
could keep any in my pocket." Let a man take that which 
he expends in drink, and put it on one side ; and put on the 
other side all the enjoyment he has received from it, — what 
then ? It amounts to very little. These, however, are small 
considerations compared to some others that might be urged. 
The tendency of strong drink is to brutalize men, and of that 
I have had abundant proof from observation and from reading 
the newspapers. 

One Sunday, in London, between twelve and one o'clock, 
I went down to the locality known as Seven Dials. I went 
to see what could be seen there. There were crowds of peo- 
ple in the street. Many persons were surrounding an earnest 
temperance reformer, who was telling them some wholesome 
truths. I looked at the people. There was one woman who 
seemed to me to have but one garment on her. It was a cold 
day. She stood shivering in the cold, but she had threepence 
in her hand, watching the door of " The Grapes." I saw men 
hanging about, licking their white lips, — and their tongues 
were as white as their lips, — waiting for those doors to open 
at one o'clock. I saw boys and girls of fifteen years of age 



PENNIES OF THE POOR. 609 

in the most wretched state of poverty. My heart ached as I 
saw those crowds waiting for the public-houses to open, all 
having their few pence clenched in their hands. The temper- 
ance reformer who spoke to them said : " Why, some of you 
have n't got any shirts on, and yet you are going to pay the 
money that should go to buy some into the brewery and into 
the public-house, and what is the consequence ? The conse- 
quence is that you are shirtless, and that the people who 
ought to be engaged in supplying what you need are without 
employment because the warehouses are overstocked. Why 
don't you buy, and make a market for linen, shirting, and 
leather, instead of making a market for beer, when you get 
nothing but misery from it." I stood and looked at the 
crowd, and then looked all over the front of that public- 
house ; and I tell you (I speak my own sentiments) that, as 
I looked and there saw the names, 



TRUMAN, HANBURY, AND BUXTON. 



my thoughts were as follows : I shall answer for what I say 
in the day of judgment, but, so help me God, in my extrem- 
ity I would not have my name on such a house for all the 
money spent on drink, and that 'is <£ 140,000,000 sterling a 
year. After that I could n't sleep nights. It is to me the 
most astounding thing in England, that men should get their 
living, and make money, and grow rich out of the pennies of 
the poor. 

There are some other reasons why I hate the trade and 
wage war against it. We have a great command, "Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, 



610 UNAVAILING PETITIONS. 

and thy neighbor as thyself." " On these two command* 
ments hang all the law and the prophets." My profes- 
sions of love to God are not worth a fig, unless they beget 
in me a love for my neighbor. Who is my neighbor ? The 
liquor-seller is my neighbor, and I am bound to love him, 
not his trade ; I must love even the- poor wretch who said that 
he would cut my throat if he had to live ten years to do it. 
In pure love to the liquor-seller, then, I can attack his busi- 
ness with all the power I have. I have heard some people 
say : The liquor-seller has no conscience, no benevolence, and 
no sympathy. This is all wrong. The liquor-seller has a 
conscience, he has benevolence and sympathy. If a man 
should fall down in front of his establishment and break a 
limb, he would, no doubt, run out, lift him into an easy posi- 
tion, wipe the drops from his brow, and help him to the best 
of his ability. Some of them have, no doubt, given according 
to their ability to the relief of the distressed by flood or fire. 

But take such a man in his business, and where is his 
sympathy and benevolence towards the wretched victim of 
his own trade ? His nefarious business comes between him 
and all sympathy for his fellow-men. Let a wife or a child 
cry to him, " Don't serve my husband or my father with 
drink," nine out of every ten would serve him if he had the 
money to pay for it. I said this at Edinburgh, and I was 
astonished at the letters that came from wives who had been 
insulted and abused when going to plead for their husbands. 
One woman was taken up for a breach of the peace, simply 
because she had knelt down in a saloon and prayed for her 
husband, who was in an inner room. 

Let me suppose that I went into one of your saloons. I 
shall not do so ; but suppose I should, though I don't know 
that I like to suppose the case. I feel like the negro who was 
arguing with another, and said to him : — 



A SENSITIVE DAEKEY. 



611 



"Now, Cuff, if we want to 'lustrate dis yer point, an' 
bring it out ob de dark profundity in which it is evaporating 
itself, we shall hab to s'pose a case." 

" Very well, s'pose away den." 

"Now, s'pose you was 
down at Brigham's saloon 
last night." 

"I war n't dar." 

" But s'pose you was." 

"Tell you, I war n't 
dar." 

" Well, you need n't git 
mad about it, or else we 
shall hab to drop de argu- 
ment, an' let it sink into 
de profundity from which 
it was gwine to evaporate 
itself." 

" Well, den, s'pose away ; 
but don't touch my moral 
character." 

" Well, den, s'pose you was at Brigham's saloon last 
night." 

" You say dat again, nigger, an' I '11 knock you down. 
I won't let any man s'pose I go into a place whar dey sell 
liquor." 

Now, it cannot be supposed that I would enter a liquor- 
shop ; but suppose I should, for the sake of the argument. 

Now, suppose the proprietor had read the history of my 
life from twelve to twenty-five, a life of almost unmitigated 
misery and privation ; suppose he knew that my prospects 
are now bright ; that the dark and gloomy pall that hung- 
rier the drunkard's grave is removed, and that I bathe in 




YOU SAY DAT AGAIN, NIGGER. 



612 TWO QUESTIONS. 

the bright beams of the star of hope that dawned years ago 
upon my pathway. Suppose he knows that in those dark 
days none loved me, none esteemed me ; that I was homeless, 
friendless ; that now I have a home, a beloved wife, an affec- 
tionate circle of loved ones. Suppose he knows that I am a 
member of a Christian church, in good standing with my 
brethren. He knows that if I drink that glass of brandy it 
will make my name infamous, a by-word, a reproach, a loath- 
ing, a scorn in the community ; that it would break the heart 
of my wife, and bring sorrow to all who care for me ; that it 
would ruin me, body and soul, for time and for eternity ; how 
many liquor-sellers are there, who, knowing all that, would 
refuse to give me the brandy to-morrow morning ? That is a 
question I don't answer, but I will ask another. How many 
saloon-keepers are there who would pay money to bring it to 
pass, and pay more money to set the telegraph wires to work ? 
u Aha! Gough, the temperance advocate, who spoke on 
temperance one night, was drunk the next day ! Ha, ha, 
ha ! " How many are there who would chuckle, and laugh, 
and rub their hands, to see me cursing, staggering, and reel- 
ing through the streets with a broken-hearted wife at my 
heels ? That is another question I do not answer ; but there 
is not a saloon-keeper in the country I would trust, not that 
they hate me as an individual, but as an advocate of temper- 
ance, and an enemy to their trade. There is no traffic under 
heaven that will beget a spirit of malice in the heart so 
quickly as the traffic in intoxicating liquors, and that is one 
reason why I hate it. 

The Rev. A. Wallace of Edinburgh was going through a 
street in that city one day, when he noticed a fine, stalwart 
young man standing in front of a public-house with two or 
three of his companions, and a young woman was leaning 
upon his arm, having a fine boy in her arms. " John," she 



A WIFE'S PLEA. 



613 



said, " come home ; the fire is burning brightly, for I got all 
ready for you." She was a pretty little woman, and she 
looked and pleaded in her husband's face. As a last resort, 
she put the boy into his arms, and the boy crowed with 
delight. He took him in his arms. His wife put her arm 
through his, her face glistening* with satisfaction; and they 
were walking away, when the publican put out his head, " John, 
John ! Don't be soft, John. Don't be soft." And the man 

looked for a moment, and, 

with misery in his face, he 

^ put the boy into the arms 

'-= of his wife. Said she, 

"Don't go." 

" Stand off," said 

he, and, throwing 

down half-a- 

crown on the 

flags, walked 

into the 

liquor-shop. 

We are not 
in the habit 
of realizing 

JOHN, COME HOME, THE FIRE IS BURNING BRIGHTLY." 

the terrible 
evil of drunkenness unless we are brought face to face with 
it. A person once said to me : "I have sold liquor for ten 
years, and I have not seen half that you talk about." " No, 
sir," said I, " because you do not desire to see it ; you do not 
go where it is." If I were to take a gun, and fire across a 
river into the town opposite, I might fire my gun, enjoy the 
flash, and hear the report; it would be all excitement to me. 
Some one comes across the river and cries : " Stop ! don't 
fire that gun any more ? " " Why should I not fire the gun 




614 REFORMING "FROM WITHIN OUTWARDS." 

if I please ? " "I have come from the other side, and dead 
men lie in the streets there, women are mourning over the 
bodies of their husbands, children, with hands dabbled in 
blood, are seeking among those that strew the streets for a 
father." " But, sir, I have fired eight or ten times, and have 
not seen all you talk about." " No, sir, because you did not 
go where the shot struck." 

A well-known author and traveller, in the winter of 1874, 
came to places in the West where, as he says, "They had 
been swept by the besom of the crusading women." He 
could not obtain his glass of beer easily, and so he tells us 
that " there is more drinking among loafers, because the retail 
places are closed; " and tells us that u the root of the evil lies 
deeper ; lies in the neglect in the training of children, in big- 
otry, in narrowness, etc. ; " as if the liquor business did not 
produce more neglect of children, more selfish ideas of man- 
hood, more destruction of intellectual culture, more hereditary 
disease, than any other trade whatever. He says we must 
reform "from within outwards," — by the way, that is just 
the thing we want to do, keep the inside of our being from 
drink. He says, not reform " inward from outside ; " then, of 
course, people should never keep the skin clean, never wash 
the outside of the body to assist in maintaining internal 
health. 

But will intellect, and careful training, and every oppor- 
tunity of culture prevent many from experiencing the utmost 
degradation from the drink, if they take it ? Let the great 
army of those who have graduated from the highest places, 
and exalted stations, and the finest culture, who have passed 
into the ranks of the intemperate, and died the drunkard's 
death, answer. David Rittenhouse, the celebrated astronomer, 
in determining the position and size of the stars, found that 
a silk fibre, however small, would not only cover the star, but 



A HARD MASTER. 615 

so much of the heavens that the star, in passing the glass, 
would be obscured for several seconds. The finest silk fibre 
larger than a star! So it was with our travelling author. 
The glass of beer he wanted hid all this shame, and blood, 
and tears. 

The money value of churches, chapels, schools, colleges, 
and all the beneficent corporations of this wide country, would 
not pay the nation's drink bill for one year, and yet many of 
us think so little of it. It is no strange thing to find people 
who think as lightly of this great evil as Kobert Toombs did 
of civil war, when he said, just before the rebellion, " War ! 
why it is just a word of three letters." Yes, it is a small 
word, and can be covered with your pen as you write it. 
But what did it become ? Let the Grand Army of the Re- 
public tell us to-day. 

One night, in the middle of August, 1875, there was, in 
the coal regions of Pennsylvania, a great army of men who 
received the first wages for many months. The long strike 
was ended that had withdrawn so many millions of wealth, in 
production, ' from the business of the country ; the pay-day 
gave them once more the means to pay some of their accumu- 
lated debts, and put more comfort into the squalor of their 
homes. But how was it? The press of this country rang 
with accounts of the pandemonium into which these mining 
towns were turned ; the destruction of property, the bloody 
encounters, people shutting themselves indoors because mur- 
der was loose and life was not safe. Why? Only and solely 
because the liquor business flourished that night. Oh, if they 
had only struck against that set of masters ! 

I am an advocate for all the rights of the workingman, but 
I believe strikes, as a general thing, are blunders. I believe 
that all conflict and antagonism between labor and capital is 
a mistake, but with all my heart and soul I advocate a uni- 



616 A COMMENDABLE STRIKE. 

versal, unanimous, and persistent strike against this business. 
Yes, strike hard, and strike home ; warring not with men, but 
against a demoralizing, ruinous traffic. Strike against it at 
home ; strike against it at public receptions ; strike at the 
decanters and whiskey-flasks ; strike at the cut-glass of the 
moderate drinker, and rum-jug of the inebriate ; strike in the 
name of justice, purity, and humanity ; strike for the love of 
country, and in behalf of drunkards' wives and children, and 
the poor victims of this miserable trade ; strike against it at 
the ballot-box, in your churches, at your family-altars, and in 
your private prayers. Strike till you die ; and, by God's help, 
we shall do something to blot out the most awful curse of 
the nineteenth century. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

ANNIHILATION OUR WAR CRY — FRUIT OF THE DRAM-SHOP — 
BRUTES IN HUMAN FORM — THE DAWN OF DAY. 



My First View of Niagara Falls — " Back ! Back for your Lives " — Receiv- 
ing His Just Deserts — Moral Suasion — A Poor Woman's Story — A 
Brute in Human Form — A Mother's Plea — "For God's Sake Spare 
My Child ! " — The Lowest of the Low — Your Money and Your Life — 
A Mother's Grief — A Tour of Observation after Dark — What I Saw 
— Dreadful Scenes in a Liquor Shop — Pettifogging Shysters — Blood- 
money — Trial by Jury — " Did You Smell It ? " — The Patient Old Man 
and His Hay — A Young Man's Story — A Thrilling Incident — Carrying 
Home the Dead Body of His Father — Temperance Bitters — The Jury 
and the Stolen Bacon — A Foregone Conclusion — A Corrupt Judge — 
Retributive Justice — "A Bit of Bread, Please, for I'm Hungry" — Pull- 
ing a Tooth by Degrees — Steps in the Right Direction. 

HE first time I saw Niagara 
Falls, I thought a parallel 
might be drawn between the 
stream, rapids, and cataract, 
and the stream, rapids, and 
cataract of drunkenness. 
Above the Falls of Intemper- 
ance the water is bright and smooth ; 
thousands who embark on that placid 
stream, as it glides down and comes 
into the rapids, are swept on with 
fearful rapidity, and sent into the 
gulf at the rate of 30,000, 40,000, and 50,000 a year, a fearful 
waste of human life. The friends of humanity see this ter- 
rible destruction ; they station themselves above, and cry out 
to the people, " Back ! back for your lives : none escape who 

617 




618 "STOP THAT BALL!" 

get into these rapids, except by a miracle. Back, back fc* 
your soul's sake ; for no drunkard can inherit eternal life.' 
And they keep many back. Still there is the stream, and, in 
spite of every effort, the embarkation continues. Men, in the 
pure spirit of benevolence, devise means to rescue those who 
are in the rapids, and they construct a bridge over the verge 
of the cataract. They save many of the poor, battered, 
drowning, shrieking wretches who have drifted to the very 
edge ; they set them on the bridge, bind up their wounds, and 
send them up the stream to tell others how they felt when 
they were in the rapids. The saved ones show the scars on 
their limbs, and they keep thousands back. Men upon the 
bridge and on the banks plead with hands uplifted ; still there 
is a stream of them pouring into eternity. Let us go and 
see what is the matter. Away up yonder we find men whose 
sole business is to push others into the stream, or to entice 
them to embark that they may receive the hire of the boats. 
Now, then, what shall we do ? We will go up there, and, with 
the might and power that God has given us, we will stop that 
murderous business. And that is common sense. 

Our work has been very much like a game of ten-pins, — 
if you will allow me to use the illustration. We have been 
very busy in picking up the pins, but directly we set them up 
the liquor-seller has begun rolling the ball to knock them 
down again. We have picked up the pins, and said, It is 
good work to set them up; but the ball came rolling in 
again, and knocked them down in every direction. We have 
buried the dead wood, and new pins have been produced, and 
the game has gone on. But the cry has gone forth, it has 
gathered strength, and by and by it will be thundered into 
the ears of the legislature, Stop that ball ! And when pub- 
lic sentiment cries out, it will be obeyed, and the ball will be 
stopped. 



A DESERVED THRASHING. 619 

One reason why we desire annihilation of this traffic is 
because we have no redress or protection. Our cry is, Pro- 
tection ! Protection for whom ? Protection for ourselves, 
and for our wives and children, who have it not. Why, what 
protection have we ? A poor woman went into a dram-shop 
and asked the liquor-seller to sell her husband no more drink. 
The thin ringers of agony had traced burning characters upon 
her face, and in her misery she came to plead for her husband. 
What was the liquor-seller's answer ? He took a tumbler and 
dipped it in the refuse of his bar, and threw the contents in 
her face. She went home and told her husband. He went to 
that man's shop — drunkard as he was, he felt the treatment 
of his wife — and thrashed him so that he did not stand up for 
two days. The liquor-seller prosecuted the drunkard, and 
he was fined five dollars and costs for assault and battery. 
The drunkard then turned and prosecuted the liquor-seller for 
throwing dirty water in the face of his wife, and it was proved 
that she was intruding on his premises. 

Subject as we all are to the evil brought upon us, we have 
no redress. I believe that temperance, morality, piety, and 
virtue are in the majority in this country, and that drunken 
ness, ruffianism, and debauchery are in the minority ; yet the 
majority are ruled, and trampled under foot, by the rank, 
reeking, reeling, rotten minority. We have no power of re- 
dress. Some say : " You must try moral suasion. This is a 
moral movement, and I do not believe you will do any good 
but by moral means." What are moral means? Do you con- 
sider a wholesome law a moral agency ? I consider the pro- 
hibitory law to be moral suasion ; and I believe this : That 
you might as well undertake to storm Gibraltar with a pop- 
gun, dam Niagara with a bundle of straw, or do any other 
impossible thing, as to move a man by moral suasion who has 
no moral principle. Go to these men with moral suasion, and 



620 MORAL SUASIONISTS. 

they will bow and smile and assent to all you say, and then, 
when your back is turned, cry out, "What a contemptible 
pack of fools these men are." 

A young man once advised me to advocate pure moral 
suasion. At a meeting where this young man was present, I 
said to the audience, pointing to him : " Some say we ought 
to advocate moral suasion exclusively. Now I will give you 
a fact. Thirteen miles from this place there lived a woman, 
who was a good wife, a good mother, a good woman." I then 
related her story as she told it. 

" My husband is a drunkard ; I have worked, and hoped, 
and prayed, but I almost give up in despair. He went away, 
and was gone ten days. He came back ill with the small- 
pox. Two of the children took it, and both of them died. I 
nursed my husband through his long illness, — watched over 
him night and day, feeling that he could not drink again, nor 
ever again abuse me. I thought he would remember all this 
terrible experience. Mr. Leonard kept a liquor shop about 
three doors from my house, and, soon after my husband was 
well enough to get out, Mr. Leonard invited him in, and gave 
him some drink. He was then worse than ever. He now 
beats me and bruises me. Before I was married I worked 
in a factory, and I never dreamed of such treatment then. 
I went into Mr. Leonard's shop one day, nerved almost to 
madness, and said, ' Mr. Leonard, I wish you would not sell 
my husband any more drink.' 

" ' Get out of this,' said he ; c away with you. This is 
no place for a woman ; clear out.' 

" ; But I don't want you to sell him any more drink.' 

" ' Get out, will you ? If you was n't a woman, I 'd knock 
you into the middle of the street.' 

"'But, Mr. Leonard, please don't sell my husband any 
more drink.' 



FOOTPRINTS OF SATAN. 621 

44 4 Mind your own business, I say.' 

"'But my husband's business is mine.' 

44 4 Get out ! If you don't go, I '11 put you out.' 

44 1 ran out, and the man was very angry. Three days 
afterward a neighbor came in, and said, 'Mrs. Tuttle, your 
Ned 's just been sent out of Leonard's shop, so drunk that he 
can hardly stand.' 

44 4 What, my child, only ten years old ? ' 

" 4 Yes.' 

44 The child was picked up in the street, and brought 
home, and it was four days before he got about again. I 
then went into Leonard's shop, and said, 4 You gave my boy 
Ned drink.' 

44 4 Get out of this, I tell you,' said the man. 

44 1 said, 4 I don't want you to give my boy drink any 
more. You have ruined my husband, for God's sake spare my 
child,' and I went upon my knees, and tears ran down my 
cheeks. He then came and took me by the shoulders, and 
kicked me out doors." 

Then said I, pointing directly to my friend, "Young man, 
you talk of moral suasion; suppose that woman was your 
mother, what would you do to the man that kicked her ? " He 
jumped right off his seat, and said, " I 'd kill him." " That's 
moral suasion, is it ? " " Yes," said he, repeating it, " I 'd kill 
him, just as I 'd kill a woodchuck that had eaten my beans." 

Now we do not go so far as that ; we do not believe in 
killing or persecution, but we believe in prevention. We be- 
lieve the people demand protection, and they will never rest 
till they obtain it. 

I hate the traffic because of its hardening influence. I 
have heard it proved (I am not going to prove it, you 
know, and I will not say what I believe about it) that a 
liquor-seller is worse than a counterfeiter, and worse than a 



622 DREADFUL BAR-ROOM SCENES. 

highway robber. I once saw a picture divided in two. On 
one side was a representation of a man presenting a pistol to 
another, and saying, "Your money or your life ; " on the other, 
a liquor-seller was holding out a glass of liquor to a man, with 
these words, " Your money and your life ; " and underneath 
were the words, "Which is the worst? " 

A mother came to me in great grief. What is the matter? 
"My son, my eldest born, is dying from delirium tremens. 
He is my only son, and I have no hope of him." Suddenly 
she rose, and her eye flashed fire as she said : " I could have 
saved him if it had not been for the man who keeps the liquor- 
shop below. My son was sober for eighteen months, when he 
went to do some work at that saloon, and they enticed him to 
drink ; and now he 's dying. Oh, if those who heard you last 
night had felt as I did, I would have led them, and we 'd have 
torn that groggery all to pieces." 

It is the same in every country and in every clime. In a 
certain city in Great Britain, when making, with a friend, a 
tour of observation on a Saturday night, we posted ourselves 
opposite a liquor-shop, and stayed there about three quarters 
of an hour. I saw women go in with babes in their arms, 
looking as if they had been born to suffer and gasp and die, — 
poor, pallid, rheum-eyed wretches, drinking their liquor. 
I saw little bundles of rags, standing on tiptoe to put the 
money on the counter, and receiving liquor in exchange. 
One little girl had but one garment on her, but she had her 
bottle filled, and took it away. I saw everything, from a 
blacking-bottle to a tin pail, brought there to be filled with 
liquor. One man, in rags, had a bottle of it, and then 
found money enough for a glass, — half of this he drank him- 
self, and the rest he gave to a boy about eight years of age. 
Said I, "What are they giving to the children besides?" 
" Oh," said my friend, "they give them little bits of 'sweety,' 



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DEFENDERS OF THE LIQUOR-SELLERS. 625 

or candy, to encourage them to come to their shop." Looking 
in another direction, I saw the proprietor. There he was, 
with his coat off, dealing out the liquor, with three others, as 
busy as they could be. " That man," said the gentleman who 
was with me, "is a trustee and office-holder in one of the 
prominent churches in our city." Is there any trade on earth 
like it? , 

Moral suasion here ? Moral suasion is a very good thing, 
but I believe the devil must sometimes be rooted out by main 
force, and then you will have a vacuum in which you can turn 
round with your moral-suasion lever. Now we do not believe 
in mob law, or any kind of persecution, and we are in favor of 
prevention and protection by prohibition ; and we find that 
we cannot be protected without prohibition. The law is an 
honorable profession, and there are many men who are an 
honor to it. I wish to say nothing against the law. Some of 
the greatest and best men that ever lived practised law, but 
there is a set of miserable, dirty, pettifogging shysters, who 
would take a fee if every dollar of it was blistered with the 
widow's tears, and that widow their own mother ; who would 
take a fee if every shilling of it was crusted with blood. And 
these are the men who generally defend the liquor-seller, — 
they are men who will do anything for money. 

For instance : Here is a man brought up for selling liquor. 
You, as a witness, may swear that a certain man went into his 
saloon and bought brandy, and drank eight glasses, and you 
have it down in your note-book, " 10.15, first glass ; 10.30, 
second glass; 11, third glass." You have the very time 
marked, and you can prove it by other witnesses. He was 
sober when he went in, and so drunk when he came out that 
you had to lift him into a cab and get him home. Will that 
prove that the man sold him liquor ? Oh, no ! Up jumps 
Mr. Lawyer to question the witness. 
38 



626 



EAENIISiG BLOOD MONEY. 



" Gentlemen of the jury, I ask your particular attention 
while I propound a few questions to the witness. If I un- 
derstood you, sir, you have distinctly stated that this indi- 
vidual procured brandy at the shop of my respectable 
client?" 

" Yes, sir, that is what I said." 

"Now, sir, remember you are under oath; you have 
taken an oath, sir, to tell the truth 
and nothing but the truth. You 
swear that this in- r 
dividual procured 
brandy at the shop 
of my respectable 
client ; now I ask 
you, sir, how do 
you know that it 
was brandy?" 

« Why, he ask- 
ed for brandy." 

"Oh, ah! I have 
nothing to do with 
what he asked for. 
Gentlemen of the 
jury, mark the equivocation of this witness. I have nothing 
to do with what he asked for. How did you know it was 
brandy ? " 

"Why, he asked—" 

" Gentlemen, I have nothing to do with what he asked 
for. He might have asked for corrosive sublimate, but he 
might not have got it. Now, sir, I want you to remember 
that they can color water to present the precise appearance 
of brandy ; did you smell it ? " 

« Why, I smelt a great deal of liquor." 




A PETTIFOGGING SHYSTER. 



A COMMON FARCE. 627 

" All ! did you smell the identical article that you have so 
presumptuously stated to this respectable jury was brandy ? " 
- « No, I did not smell it." 

"Did you taste it?" 

" No, sir." 

u Now then, remember, sir, you may be deceived. Re- 
member, sir, that toast and water sometimes looks very much 
like pale brandy ; remember, sir, that it might not have been 
brandy, and you are under oath, sir, remember that. Now, 
taking all these things into consideration, sir, are you pre- 
pared before this respectable jury to say that that man 
drank brandy procured of my client ? " 

" Well, no ; I should not be willing to swear to that." 

" That will do, you need not say anything further." 

The whole case is dismissed because it is not proved. 
And that is the farce enacted and re-enacted again and 
again in the name of law. Now we believe that only by 
sweeping this traffic away and prohibiting it entirely, shall 
we be successful ; making the possession of articles and 
implements of the trade satisfactory evidence of its being 
carried on, and laying the burden of proof on the liquor- 
seller himself. 

We have borne long enough with it, until patience seems 
to cease being a virtue. I heard of an old man, a very patient 
old man, who was never known to express his opinion but 
once. He had a lot of hay, all made and ready to cart; 
the rain came and wet it; he said nothing, but made the 
hay over again. The rain came a second time and wet 
it; he drew down his face and made the hay over again. 
Finally he got it on the cart and thought he was perfectly 
safe; but, as he was going through a brook with it, one 
of the wheels came off and the hay fell into the water. He 
said nothing, but raked out as much of it as he could, and 



628 



AN EXCEEDINGLY PATIENT OLD MAN. 



then made the hay again. He put it on the cart a fourth 
time, and, the wind being very high, the barn-door came off 
and fell on top of the old man. Some one came to his assist- 
ance and picked him up, and when he recovered from his 
flattening process, he opened his mouth and spoke : " Well, I 
begin to think that under existing circumstances it is about 
time for me to ex- 
press myself." And 
we have a feeling 
now, that under ex- 
isting circumstances 
it is about time for 
us to express our- 
selves; and the pub- 
lic will express them- 
selves in a way not 
to be misunderstood. 
Moral suasion will 
not effect the object. 
I heard a young man 
in a railway carriage 
tell his own story 
while conversing on 
this subject. Said 
he: — 




EXHAUSTED PATIENCE. 



" My father was a drunkard for years ; my mother was a 
strong-minded, energetic woman, and with the help of the 
boys she managed to keep the farm from debt and mortgage. 
When my father signed the pledge, what pleased her most, 
next to his having signed it, was that she could tell him there 
was not a debt or mortgage on the farm. He used to drive 
into the city, about eight miles distant, twice a week ; and I 
* recollect my mother saying to me, ' I wish you would try and 



A YOUNG MAN'S STOKY. 629 

persuade your father not to go any more. We don't need 
the money he earns ; and, George, I am afraid of temptations 
and old associates.' 4 Oh,' said I, ' don't think of it ; father 's 
all right.' Well, one evening we had a heavy load, and were 
going towards home. My father stopped at one of his old 
places of resort, and gave me the whip and reins, intending 
that I should remain outside. I hitched the horses, tied up 
the reins, and followed him in. As soon as the landlord saw 
my father he said, 4 1 am glad to see you : how do you do ? Upon 
my word you are a stranger. How long is it since the tem- 
perance whim got hold of you ? ' ' Oh, about two years,' said 
my father. 'Well,' said the landlord, 'you see we are getting 
on here very well,' and they chatted together for some time. 
By and by he asked my father to take something to drink. 
'Oh, no,' said he, 4 I don't drink now.' ' Oh ! but I have got 
some temperance bitters here,' said the landlord ; c same kind 
temperance men use, and they acknowledge that it is purify- 
ing to the blood, especially in warm weather. Just try a 
Little.' And he poured out a glass and offered it. I stepped 
up, and said, ' Don't, don't give my father that.' That gave 
the liquor seller just the opportunity he wanted, and he said, 
' Well, boys are n't boys hardly now-a-days ; they get to be 
men amazing early. If I had a boy like you, I think I 
should take him down a little. What do you think, Mr. 
Meyers? Do you bring that boy along to take care of 
you ? Do you want a guardian ? ' That stirred the old 
man's pride, and he told me to go and look after the 
horses. He sat and drank till ten o'clock ; and every time 
the landlord gave him drink, I said, ' Don't give it to him. 5 
At last my father arose — he was drunk. I got him into 
the wagon and drove towards home. My heart was very 
heavy and I thought of my mother, ' Oh ! how will she feel 
about this ? ' When Ave were about two miles from home, my 



630 A MURDERER PROTECTED BY LAW. 

father said, 4 1 will drive.' ' No, no,' said I, ' let me drive.' 
He snatched the reins from me, fell from the wagon, and, 
before I could check the horses, the forward wheel had 
crushed his head in the road. I was till midnight getting 
his dead body on the wagon. My mother never smiled 
from that day to the day of her death. Four months 
after that, she died. Now," said the young man, after he 
had finished the story, " that man killed my father ; he was 
my father's murderer. I saw him in the city a few weeks 
ago, and do you suppose I could hold my tongue when I 
saw him ? I said to him, ' You infernal scoundrel, you 
villain, I will take you by the throat, I cannot keep my 
hands from you.' What did he say ? c You touch me, young 
man, you dare to lift your hand against me, and I will put 
you in the custody of the law in a minute.' " 

Ah yes, if he had laid his hand upon him, he would have 
been fined for an assault upon the murderer of his father 
and he would have had no redress. There is not a liquor- 
seller but can entice your brother, your father, your son, into 
his dram-shop to-night, and make him drunk in spite of your 
entreaties and your prayers, and then kick him out at mid- 
night, and you may find his dead body in the gutter. All 
you have to do is to take the dead body and bury it and 
say nothing about it ; you have no redress, no protection. 
Now protection is what we want. And who are they who 
have worked hard for prohibition in our elections? Often 
the drunkards. During an election in a Vermont town, a 
man who was half drunk said to his friends, " Here, give us a 
lift. I go for knocking the heads of the barrels in and for 
letting the liquor run in the street. If it was n't for tempta- 
tions at every corner, I'd be a decent man. Come and help 
us. Hurrah for the liquor law ! I expect I shall be too 
drunk to be here this afternoon, and I have come to help you 
now." 



A WEAKNESS FOR BACON". 



631 



Who are they who are opposed to the prohibition law ? I 
know some of them, and I will tell yon the reason of their 
opposition by relating an anecdote that was told me in the 
West. A man who had stolen some bacon went to a lawyer 
to defend him. The lawyer said he thought it was a bad case, 
and he would not take it. However, the man prevailed on 
the lawyer to get up a defence for him. In court, five wit- 
nesses swore that the man was the thief, and that some of the 
bacon was found in his possession. The lawyer could only say 
a few words about the man's wife and family, but the prisoner 




THE JURYMEN — TEN OF WHOM ATE THE BACON. 

seemed perfectly easy. The Jury at once returned a verdict of 
" Not guilty." " Why," said the lawyer aside to his client, 
" how is this ? There must be something behind the scenes 
which I do not see." " Yes," said the client, " there is, and 
I don't know as I mind telling you; ten of the jury had 
some of that bacon." Now there are so many that have had 
some of the bacon, there are so many interests involved in 
the liquor business, that it is difficult to overturn it. 

We defend humanity against the wrong this use of 
property inflicts upon it, — some people seem to defend the 
rights of property against those of humanity. We are wag- 
ing war against an immense invested capital, I grant you; 



632 PERSONAL LIBERTY. 

but invested in what ? Some men say they have a right ta 
engage in whatever business they choose, and do what they 
please with their own. No, they have not. " Yes, but you 
are interfering with the liberty of the subject if you prevent 
a man from investing his property as he may choose." A 
man cannot always do what he pleases with his own. Sup- 
pose a man has a vacant lot in the city. He has the title* 
deeds, and the property is his own as far down as he can dig, 
and as high up as he can build. Suppose he has a cow, or a 
horse, they are his property, too ; he owns them from head to 
hoofs ; they are his. Well, suppose one of them should die 
in the middle of July ; it is his property, dead or alive. Bu1 
suppose he draws the carcass on to his vacant lot, and leave* 
it there. You say to him, "look here, my friend, this is a per 
feet nuisance." "Mind your business ; it is my property, and 
I have a right to put my property on my property." " No. 
you have not." "Why?" "Because it is injuring youi 
neighbors." 

Interfering with the liberty of the subject ! Suppose you 
have been in a place where the plague is raging. You pur- 
chase a perishable cargo, and invest in it everything you have, 
and all you can borrow, and you say, "If I can land it in 
fourteen days I shall make my fortune ; if not, I am a ruined 
man." The health officers come on board the ship, as you 
are nearing port, and put it under quarantine for thirty days. 
You say, "But everything I have is here, and I shall be a ru- 
ined man if I don't discharge my cargo in fourteen days." 
"Yours is a hard case, sir, but we cannot help it. Your 
cargo must remain here till the quarantine is up. We can- 
not permit you to land your cargo." " Then I am a ruined 
man; property and credit gone. I must land my cargo." 
"Look at yonder city; would you introduce a pestilence 
into it to save your property and credit? Shame on you 



A CORRUPT JUDGE. 633 

for your selfishness." You would not be allowed to bring 
in a bale of rags in which the plague may be lurking, bring- 
ing disease and death to thousands, no matter how much of 
your property may be invested in the merchandise. But 
here are smoking fires and simmering still and noisome 
vapors, manufacturing out of good, healthy, nourishing* grain 
an instrumentality that tends to destroy human life, and to 
debase, degrade, and imbrute humanity itself, and we oppose 
them for the sake of humanity. 

We will be content with nothing short of entire prohibi- 
tion. What a farce this license system may become ! In a 
certain town I was asked if I would tell some circumstances 
if they would relate them and vouch for the truth of the state- 
ments. So I said to the people : — 

" Some of you may be surprised to learn that licenses are 
universally granted in this town, when the people, by a ma- 
jority of five hundred, declared they would have no licenses. 
I can let you into the secret, and I will tell you a fact or two 
that occurred here. One of the judges was one day asked why 
he was in town. He replied (he was a Dutchman), < Oh, I 
comes to town to-tay on de tavern beesiness ; de liquor. Ve 
gets a goot dinner, und ve gets plenty of trinks for noting, 
und it pays pretty veil.' He then went into a shop and asked 
for some brandy-and-water. It was given to him, but he did 
not pay. 'I am,' he said, 'one of de judges,— you under- 
stands, —I don't pay noting for liquor ; ' and then went out. 
A certain liquor-seller, speaking to the judge, after there had 
been a majority of five hundred against the liquor traffic, 
said, 'What are you going to do?' 'Oh,' said he, 4 I don't 
know. I can't give no advice at all.' At last the liquor-sel- 
ler offered to bet with the judge that he could not give a 
license if it was applied for, and the bet was taken. Some 
time afterwards I saw the sheriff of the place, and I said, 



634 



SLAIN BY HIS OWN ACT. 



' You look pale.' ' Ah, yes,' he said, ' I shall never get over 
it. It is my duty to perform the part of executioner, and I 
had to hang a man. I offered two hundred dollars to any man 
who would do it, but could get nobody. It has broken me 
down, and I believe death has struck me." It was a horrible 
case, .too. A man had gone into the shop of the man who 
was selling under the 
license granted 
through the bet with 
the judge. The man 
went into the shop 
sober, but got drunk, 
and went out and 
murdered that very | 
judge, and his wife, 
while they were in 
bed; for which the 
murderer was hung. 
Thus the man was 
murdered by the hand 
of another who ob- 
tained the fiery 
draught that nerved 
his arm to murder at the very house which he had licensed 
for a bribe. 

Some tell us that prohibition will be hard on the liquor- 
seller. Is not the liquor traffic hard upon thousands of poor 
women and children to-day? Is it not hard upon many 
who are sent out into the streets to beg, or for worse pur- 
poses ? You may suppose they lie ; I do not believe that all 
of them do. I do not believe that the poor, pale-faced, 
gaunt girl did, that hung with both her hands upon my 
arm after I had looked at her with some degree of sympathy, 




OH, BUY ME A BIT OF BREAD, 
FOE I AM HUNGRY." 



THE LIQUOR TKAFFIC A CRIME. 635 

and she begged me for something. " Oh," said she, "I don't 
want money; buy me a bit of bread, a bit of bread, please, 
for I am hungry." "Where do you live?" " Oh," said she, 
"my father is a drunkard, and he beat me cruelly, and I am 
hungry." She was a young girl, about sixteen years of age. 
You may tell me they lie ; but I believed her, and helped her, 
and I will help such as she again. Oh, there is suffering pro- 
duced by the drink, — more than if all those engaged in the 
business should be turned out of that business to-day. 

We are against property for the sake of humanity, for the 
sake of the miserable, and the wretched, and the oppressed, 
and the down-trodden. We seek to remove temptations that 
are in the way of the weak, and we know of no other way to 
do it than by classing the liquor traffic among crimes, and 
you never can get a prohibitory law unless you make liquor 
selling a crime. What do you want with laws to restrain or 
control an honorable business, a business not wicked in it- 
self ? We maintain that the liquor business is a crime, a sin 
against humanity, a sin against the dealer himself, a sin 
against the people, a sin against the Commonwealth, a sin 
against the State, a sin against God. And we believe in pro- 
hibiting that which is evil. If it is prohibited, it must be 
done by effectual means. Some say, "Use less stringent 
measures." How can we have them? A gentleman told 
me that all attempts to regulate this traffic are persecutions 
of the liquor-seller. My doctrine is this : If it is right for a 
man to sell liquor, let him sell it and never trouble him ; if it 
is wrong, prevent him from selling it and do not trouble him, 
but just quietly lift him out of his business. It is as if a 
man has a very bad tooth to be extracted and the dentist 
gives one turn with his instrument. " Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! " 
You have done him no good. He is very angry and knocks 
his fists together. Put him in the chair again, and give the 



636 DIVIDING THE RECEIPTS. 

instrument another turn. " Oh ! " Still you have done him 
no good ; he spits blood dreadfully. The best' plan is to set 
him in the chair again, give the tooth one turn, and it is out, 
and he is much better than before. 

That is just the way with regulating the business. It is 
like a man who went to get shaved. The barber gave one 
draw with the razor. Up the man jumped. " Oh ! " said he. 
" What 's the matter ? " "It pulls." " Never mind," said the 
barber, " sit down again, my friend. If the handle of the razor 
don't break, the beard is bound to come off." If the handle 
of this mighty lever don't break, the liquor-sellers are bound 
to come out, though it is very hard. We had at one time 
some liquor-sellers in jail. A bad place to put them, is it 
not? A bad place for their victims. Next to prohibition is 
a law that makes the liquor-seller responsible for the effects 
of his business. If a man goes to a dram-shop and gets 
drunk, and it can be proved that he dies through drink, that 
dram-seller is bound to support the bereaved wife and family, 
and if he cannot do it, he is sold out and made a pauper, 
and the money from the sale of his goods is given to the 
widow. Now that is fair. I heard of a gentleman once who 
had a great party invited and he had no fish. He told the 
steward he must have some fish, whatever price was paid. 
The steward came and said there was a man who had a fine 
turbot, but he would not let him have it unless he gave him 
a hundred lashes on his back. "The man is a fool," said 
the gentleman, "but we must have the fish. Bring it in." 
The fish was brought, and the man, after fifty lashes had 
been given to him, cried out, " Hold on a minute ! I 've got 
a partner in the business." "What, two such fools?" 
" Yes, your porter would not let me come in with this fish 
until I agreed to give him half what I got for it." " Bring 
him in, then, and let him have it." Now, you have a law 



A UNIVERSAL CRY. 637 

that will put a drunkard in jail for drunkenness. Set the 
drunkard at work, sawing wood, or anything else ; put the 
liquor seller at the other end of the saw, and let them look 
one another in the face. 

We are told that public sentiment is not ripe for such a 
law. It is ripe for a discussion on the subject at any rate, 
and that the friends of the temperance enterprise are bound 
to give. And we will pour the truth into the ears of the 
people until they wake up. They are waking up. The 
cry is everywhere, Give us something to stop this terrible 
tide of desolation. When men ask for something, we know 
that they are moving one step in the right direction, for that 
something their common sense and sound judgment will tell 
them must be a something that will do the work thoroughly. 
I know it is said in reference to some of these laws that they 
are very stringent. To do the work, they must be stringent. 
Governor Briggs told me there was a liquor seller in a State 
where the prohibitory law was enacted, who said he would bet 
a hundred dollars that they could not break him up. They 
said they did not want to make any bet, but they would try ; 
and he said he had two thousand dollars that he would spend 
upon the trial. Very well, they said ; they would give him a 
chance to spend some of it. They let him go on steadily for 
some weeks. He sold liquor and laughed at them — he did 
not care anything about the law — he would sell as long as 
he liked. At last they brought him up to the mayor's office, 
and they fined him ten dollars and costs upon the first com- 
plaint that was heard. He paid the money, and was going 
out quite impudently; but just as he reached the door an 
officer served a writ upon him and brought him back again. 
The next fine was twenty dollars and costs. He paid that, 
and was going out again. The officer then served another 
writ upon him, and brought him back again, and the third 



638 A DISCOMFITED LIQUOR-DEALER 

time it was twenty dollars and costs and three months in the 
common jail. 

•• I will appeal from the decision of this court."' 

'•Very well, sir; find two sureties in one hundred dollars 
each, that you will prosecute the appeal and not violate any 
provisions of the laws for the suppression of grog shops and 
tippling-houses while the appeal is pending, and we shall be 
prepared to try the other cases : an officer will attend you for 
the purpose of getting the required sureties.'' 

" Other cases ! " said the liquor seller, " how many have 
you got, then?" 

"We have got seventy-three." 

M Seventy-three ! gentlemen, did you say? " 

"Yes, there are seventy-three, sir.'' 

" May I look at the complaints ? " 

"If you please." 

" Have you got the witnesses ? " 

" That room is full of witnesses." 

" Well, gentlemen, if you will give up, I will." 

" That is all we want." 

Our object is not persecution, we want to wrong no man ; 
but we mean to surround ourselves with the wall of protection. 
If anybody can show us a better way than by the annihi- 
lation of the liquor business, we shall be very glad to receive 
his proposals. But do not hinder us. If you do not see fit to 
give your countenance and aid and co-operation, do not attempt 
to throw obstacles in our way. The day is dawning. I shall be 
in mv grave and the green grass waving over it before victory is 
achieved. Is that any reason why we should not work ? We 
are in God's hands ; if we are right, we shall succeed : if we 
are wrong, our movement will come to naught. We believe 
we shall succeed. Let us have faith, let us trust. What is 
trust, but putting your foot upon the void and finding the 



FAITH IN OUR ENTERPRISE. 639 

rock beneath? If we see no blade of grass to cheer our 
sight, let us sow, let us water, let us pray ; coming genera- 
tions will reap the harvest, and we may, God helping us, 
stand upon the shores of a better land to welcome them as 
they come with the sheaves garnered upon the field that we 
have sown in tears when we were upon earth. 

We believe that our enterprise will be successful. And 
why ? Not because we have organizations and instrumentali- 
ties simply. No, we must have faith, not in these, nor in our 
advocacy, for it is but breath ; we must have faith in some- 
thing else. You go into a manufactory and there you see 
wheels, shafts, bands, and rollers, all ready to do a certain 
kind of work; the machinery is perfect, but motionless. 
Outside there is a large wheel revolving with mighty power. 
There is the motive power, there is the machinery, and 
there is the work to be accomplished, but nothing is done. 
What shall we do? Polish our machinery? No, no. 
Shall we adorn it with badges, banners, and flags, and 
show the people the beauty and perfection of our in- 
strumentality? No. Then what shall we do? Why, some 
person who understands the mill places a large band 
over the big wheel. Now everything is in motion. Why 
was not this machinery in motion before? Because it was 
not connected with the motive power. What is the motive 
power in this enterprise ? He who sitteth upon the circle of 
the earth, who " telleth the number of the stars and calleth 
them all by their names," who " healeth the broken in heart 
and bindeth up their wounds." If united to Him by a 
band of living faith, we shall work and leave the results 
with Him. 

FINIS. 



[Copyright, 1889, by A. D. WortWngton & Co.] 



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sidering its worth, and there are a good many people who are willing to pay for a good thing when 
they can get it. We speak warmly of this publication because we believe it to be of unusual value, 
and that a large number of our readers will be glad to know our opinion of its merits. It contains 
a better full commentary on the Old and sexo Testaments, for popular and general use, than way other 
with which we are acquainted. ." — Rev. H. Clay Trumbull, in The Sunday-School Times. 



"'"PELL IT ALL." The Story of a Life's Experience in Mor- 
monism. A Thrilling Record of Woman's Life in Polygamy. By 
Mrs. T. B. H. STENHOUSE, of Salt Lake City, for Twenty-five Years the 
wife of a Mormon High Priest. Introduction by Mrs. HARRIET BEECHER 
STOWE. Fully Illustrated with Superb Engravings on Wood and Steel. 

Royal Octavo. 625 pages. Cloth, $3.00 

The most complete expose ever given to the world by a real Mormon 
woman, of the secret history, manners, customs, ceremonies, and extraordin- 
ary doings of one of the most fanatical sects the world has ever seen. The 
names of Governors and Editors, the Chief Justice and the Judges of the 
Supreme Court, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese, the influential clergy of 
various denominations, and men and women whose names are towers of 
strength and integrity, may be seen appended to testimonials which, altogether 
unasked, the author received. In this volume Mrs. Stenhouse presents to the 
world the only true picture of MORMONISM AND POLYGAMY, FROM A 
WOMAN'S STANDPOINT, which has ever yet been published. The voluntary 
introduction to the book by Mrs. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, and hun- 
dreds of testimonials from distinguished ladies, sufficiently testify to the .purity 
and delicacy shown in every page of this volume. 

" We have arisen from the perusal of Mrs. Stenhouse's simple narration 
of her experiences, with a new and strengthened sense of the enormities of the system she so well 
describes. We are sure no woman can read it without a heart full of indignation at the oppressor 
of her sisters ; no pure man without a resolution that whatever his influences, his labors or his votes 
can do to release the Mormon women from the thraldrom which binds them, shall be done ; and no 
Christian without a prayer for these struggling souls, and a new purpose to give them sympathy, 
and whatever aid he can.— Ren. Lyman Abbott, D. D., New York. 

" There is nothing even in the intense pages of Victor Hugo to surpass 
the intensity of the heart-crushed and utterly hopeless sorrow and dejection which the author de- 
picts in her graphic picture of all the Mormon homes."— Hartford Times. 

u Not until Mrs. Stenhouse produced her book, did the American reader 
possess anything which deserved to be called an expose of this American and social monstrosity."— 
Harpei 's Magazine. 



A. D. WOE THING TON & CO:S LIST, HARTFORD, CONN. 



CUNLIGHT AND SHADOW; or Gleanings from My Life 
Work. Comprising Personal Experiences, Observations, Opinions and 
Interesting Eeminiseences gathered from Thirty-eight Years Experience on 
the Platform and among the People at Home and Abroad. By JOHN B. 
GOUGH. Superbly Illustrated with Full Page Engravings and Fine Steel 
Plate Portrait of the Author. Eoyal Octavo. 542 pages. Cloth, . . $3.25 

Thousands are familiar with the story of Mr. GougLTs life — his early pov- 
erty, the horrible degradation to which he descended while a victim of drink ; 
his wretched condition and terrible sufferings ; his super-human struggles 
against intemperance; his reform; his relapse; his re-signing of the pledge 
and final victory; his world-wide fame and his extensive travels and pro- 
tracted labors in this country and abroad. u Sunlight and Shadow" con- 
tains his personal recollections and observations, covering a period of thirty- 
eight years. 

Some of the most pathetic incidents ever told are narrated in this work. 
The recollections of his own bitter experience made Mr. Gough ever ready to 
lend a helping hand to others, and the very nature of his life-work brought 
him into close contact with povertjr, crime, destitution and vice. His ready 
sympathy gained for him access to the hearts of the most degraded men and 
women, aud he has listened to thrilling life-histories and witnessed scenes that 
testify anew to the adage, "Fact is Stranger than Fiction." 

But this unique volume has a bright side. Mr. Gough's descriptions of the 
humorous side of life portray many amusing scenes. The comedies from life, 
absurd blunders, laughable mistakes, comical incidents, embarassing situa- 
tions, mostly drawn from his own experience, wall provoke the mirth of the 
most serious. His experiences with brazen-faced people ; with aspirants for 
fame and seekers after " moddle " lectures ; with beggars without number and 
bores of all kinds, are amusing episodes in his life, and are given in '-' Sun- 
light and Shadow" without reserve. 

U I am glad that my dear friend, John B. Gough, has given to the public 

this fascinating work, 'Sunlight and Shadow.' Gleanings from his life work! What a life! 
How rich the gleanings ! No voice of this generation has thrilled so many hearts to temperate and 
moral lives : to struggle against the slavery of drink, and to recover a lost manhood. He has been a 
preacher of righteousness, and this book is the echo in the world of that eloquent voice, that inimi- 
table orator. Full of amusing, pathetic, thrilling and tragic incidents, the book, like the remarkable 
author, plays on all the chords of the soul for better purposes. This book ought to be in every 
home. The best thing about it is, that it will be read. Parents and children, and young men will 
read it. They cannot help reading it. It fascinates the reader as John B. Gough. captivated the 
hearer. 100.000 copies ought to be sold. God speed it on its helpful mission." — Rev. J. O. Feck, I). D„ 
LL.D., Brooklyn, V. Y. 

"I am convinced that the price of ' Sunlight and Shadow' is a nomi- 
nal consideration by which to get so much of the life of that great apostle of temperance, John B. 
Gough. I have known him personally for the past thirty years, yes, thirty-five years— back to the 
time when he made his first speech in Albany, when I was a bank boy. Mighty evangelist of tem- 
perance ! His crown is full jewelled, with pearls and diamonds, plucked from the ditch of drunken- 
enness and washed in the fountain of Life. I need not add that I wish for the sale of thousands of 
copies of ' Sunlight and Shadow.' I will do all in my power for its widest circulation."— Rev. J. 
Hyatt Smith, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



DLATFORM ECHOES ; Or Living Truths for Head and Heart. 
Illustrated by Personal Experiences and Reminiscences, and by upwards 
of 500 Thrilling Anecdotes and Incidents, Humorous Stories, Ludicrous Ad- 
ventures, Touching Scenes and Tales of Tender Pathos drawn from the Bright, 
and Shady sides of Life. By JOHN B. GOUGH— his last and best book. 
With a full and thrilling account of Mr. Gough's Life, Career, and Death, by 
Kev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. Superbly Illustrated with 227 Engravings by 
the best artists, and two Magnificent Steel-Plate Portraits of Mr. Gough, 



A. D. WOK THING TON & CO.'S LIST, HAETFOBD, CONN. 



one from a life-sized full length painting, showing him as he appeared shortly 
after his rescue from a drunkard's grave ; the other from a photograph taken 
only a few weeks before his death. Royal Octavo. 639 pages. Cloth, $3.25 

Platform Echoes is John B. Gough in Print, and is his richest 
legacy to the world. In it he has given his best thoughts, his most touching 
tales, his most stirring anecdotes and incidents, his most telling stories of 
deepest pathos and keenest humor, together with manifold experiences and 
personal reminiscences never before published. The tenderness of his pathos 
and the spice of his humor are irresistible. But whether he narrates a story 
of mirth or sorrow, it is always to illustrate great and living truths. Stranger 
stories are here told than romance ever dreamed of, every one of them drawn 
from real life by a master hand. In every chapter he weaves in anecdote 
after anecdote, incident after incident, story after story, and underneath them 
all lie '•'•Living Truths," that stand out as beacon lights. He plays upon the 
reader's feelings as with an enchanter's wand, at one time filling his heart 
with gladness, at another blinding his eyes with tears. At his bidding hearts 
are melted, and stern, strong men, as well as sensitive women, weep tears of 
compassion, are aroused to indignation, or moved to uncontrollable laughter 
in spite of every effort to control their feelings. 

Platform Echoes contains a full, thrilling, and authentic history of 
Mr. Gough's eventful life, career, and death, written expressly for it by Rev. 
Dr. LYMAN ABBOTT, the eminent editor and divine. Of this portion of 
the work it is sufficient to say that it is eminently worthy of Dr. Abbott's pen. 
He gives a complete history of Mr. Gough's life from the cradle to the grave — 
a life more dramatic in its experiences than is often to be seen on life's stage. 

Probably no other book has received so many and such unqualified in- 
dorsements as this work. Hundreds of ministers, without solicitation, and 
with no other motive in view than the welfare of their fellow men, have writ- 
ten to the publishers wishing "Platform Echoes" God speed. In some 
instances entire pages of newspapers have been devoted to reviewing it, and 
in no case has it been awarded anything but the highest praise. 

" The dead which he slew r in his death were more than they which he slew in 

his life." _ John B. Gough has left in this book one of God's timely gifts to the world. The memoirs 
are genuine and they heed no testimonial. No living man could imitate them ; and no man who 
expects to live should fail to read them. If I am not rich enough to buy the book, I will be mean 
enough to borrow it.— Rev. A . J. Chittenden, Wheaton, III. 

"I find myself simply absorbed whenever I open the pages of this wonder- 
ful book. It is a magnificent volume in a mechanical sense, and its contents are like the marvelous 
man who wrote and spoke what is printed in this elegant work. It is full of richness, variety, 
beauty, and startling vividness which fairly holds one breathless in reading. I am reminded by this 
book of my experience under Gough's power when listening to aud seeing him on the platform for 
two hours at one time. At the end of three quarters of an hour I verily wished that he would stop 
speaking in order to relieve my emotions of a storm of excitement, but I would not have left him if 
he had spoken me nearly to death. How could any one get away from John B. Gough on the plat- 
form? This unique book thrills the heart with its pictures of -pathetic power. In one instance the 
feelings are moved to indignation and horror, in another to unutterable pity and sorrow, and in still 
another to uncontrollable laughter. I hope that all my friends and the public generally, will buv 
and read this grand book.— Rev. M. B. DeWitt, I). I)., LL D., Nashville, Term. 



'T'HE LIFE AND WORK OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
An Authentic, Impartial and Complete History of His Public Career 
and Private Life, from the Cradle to the Grave. Replete with Anecdotes, 
Incidents, Personal Reminiscences and Thrilling Story. The whole compris- 
ing the most Fascinating, Truthful and Complete History of his Life yet pub- 
lished. By Col. THOS. W. KNOX. With Splendid Steel-Plate Portrait and 
numerous Illustrations. Octavo. 544 pages. Cloth, . . . $2.25 
It gives an account of his birth-place and early home ; of his boyhood ami 

youth : how he contemplated running away to sea and the preparations he made for if ; of his col- 
lege days and the pranks he played : of his marriage : of his work as a country minister ; of his call 
to Plymouth Church : oi' his effective labors for "the down-trodden slave : of his art as a preacher ; 
of his power as an orator : of his work in England during our civil war. and the battles ho waged 
with English prejudice aud English mobs; of his editorial and political work: of Plymouth 
Church : of the great scandal and the charges made by Theodore Tilton ; of the memorable trial that 
followed ; of Mr. Eeecher's work and labors during the last years of his life ; of his travels in En - 
rope ; of his illness, death, etc. 



A. D. WOBTHINGTON & CO.' 8 LIST, HARTFORD, CONN. 



OUR WILD INDIANS ; or Thirty-three Years Personal Expe- 
rience Among the Wildest and Most Remarkable Indian Tribes of 
the Great West. A graphic record of the author's Observations, Thrilling 
Adventures, Exciting Experiences among Our Wild Indians, giving a vivid 
and authentic account of their Social Life, Habits, Dress, Customs, Exploits, 
etc., and Eeminisences of Amusing and Tragic Scenes of Indian and Frontier 
Life. By Col. EICHAED I. DODGE, of the IT. S. Army. With an Intro- 
duction by Gen. WM. T. SHERMAN. Superbly Illustrated with Steel 
Plates, Fine Wood Cuts, and Chromo-Lithograph Plates printed in fifteen 
colors, from ninety engraved stones. These Plates represent articles of Dress, 
Ornaments, Weapons, facsimiles of Indian Drawings and remarkable Objects 
of Interest and Curiosity, all of which were photographed by the U. S. Gov- 
ernment, and painted by hand from the original objects, expressly for this 
work. Royal octavo. 660 pages. Cloth, $3 50 

This thoroughly first-class book gives a truthful and minute account of 
"Our Wild Indians"' and pictures their every-day inner life; it vividly 
describes their habits, customs, religion, manners and amusements ; it gives 
graphic accounts of thrilling and exciting adventures among them ; it narrates 
daring exploits and hair-breadth escapes, not only of the author and of other 
white men, but of Indians as well; and it records desperate encounters, hand- 
to-hand combats, sudden surprises, remarkable defences, and heroic achieve- 
ments incident to frontier life. The author's narrative is spiced with the most 
thrilling accounts of famous Scouts and Guides ; of their desperate adventures 
and wonderful achievements ; of Trappers, Frontiersmen, Squatters. Squaw 
Men, Texas Cow Boys, Miners, Gold Hunters, Border Euffians and Despera- 
does ; of instances of cool courage, undaunted heroism, and marvelous escapes 
from apparently certain death, none of which have ever before been published. 

Eev. Dr. J. W. Wiley, the distinguished Bishop of the M. E. Church, 

Cincinnati, says : "It is a book of immense value, because it comes from an author so eminently 
qualified to write it." 

The President of the United States and every member of his Cabinet, as well as Bishops of the 
Protestant Churches, Foreign Ministers, and influential clergy of various denominations, were 
among the very first to indorse and subscribe for this work. Gen. Grant said, when he wrote his 
order for a copy, "It is the best book on Indian and Frontier Life that ever has been or ever will be 
written." 



OUR FAMOUS WOMEN. A Complete Record of the Lives 
^- > ^ and Deeds of the most Eminent Women of our Times. An Original 
Work, written by Twenty World-Renowned Authors. This volume gives for 
the first time the life story of distinguished American women, many of whom 
have won their way from poverty and obscurity to fame and glory. The fol- 
lowing twenty authors associated themselves together for the express purpose 
of writing this unique volume, each writer contributing one or more biogra- 
phies to it : Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Rose Terry Cook, Harriet Prescott Spofford, 
Mary Clemmer, Marion Harland, Mary A. Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Louise Chandler Moulton, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Lucy Lafcom, Elizabeth Cady 
Stanton, Susan Coolidge, Julia Ward Howe, Kate Sanborn, Lucia Gilbert Runkle, 
Lillian Whiting, Laura Curtis Billiard, Elizabeth T. Spring, Elizabeth Bryant 
Johnson and Maud Howe. 

Beautifully Illustrated with Sixteen Fine Portraits, engraved by T. Colk 
and other Eminent wood engravers, from Special Photographs taken expressly 
for this work. Eoyal octavo. 700 pages. Cloth, .... $3.2*5 

This superbly illustrated volume gives a complete history of the lives and 
deeds of the most famous women of our times. It tells of the humble circum- 
stances of their early days; of their struggles and disappointments ; of their 
years of toil, privation and hardship ; of their patience and fortitude in adver- 
sity, misfortune and affliction; of their courage, heroism, self-sacrifice and 
tender devotion. It has been in course of preparation for several years, by 
twenty of the most distinguished writers of our day, whose names are given 
above. It contains what can not be found in any other book in the world, 
viz. : the finest thoughts and most brilliant efforts of twenty of America's greatest 
authors, all concentrated into one single volume. It is, in fact, thirty complete 
and choice books in one, and at the price of one. 



.4. D. WOBTHINGTON & CO.\S LIST, HARTFOBD, CONN. 



THE ORIENTAL WORLD. A Record of Travel, Adventure 
and Exploration in Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Asia Minor and the Holy 
Land, with Descriptions of the Manners, Customs, Habits, Characteristics, 
etc., of the People, and of Adventures and Experiences among them. By 
Col. THOS. VV. KNOX, author of " The Boy Travelers in the Far East," 
"Overland Through Asia,"' "Life of Henry Ward Beecher," etc., etc. With 
fine Steel-Plate Portrait of the Author, and Forty-eight Magnificent Full-Page 
Engravings, principally engraved in London and Paris, and over Two Hundred 
Fine Ten Illustrations. Royal Octavo. 694 pages. Cloth, . . . $3.00 

" Col. Knox is no aimless sight-seer, but observes strange manners and 
men with a critical eye. In this entertaining hook he has put on permanent record many of his 
varied experiences. The publishers have issued the volume in a very superior style, and the whole 
book, text and illustrations is immensely attractive."— The Independent, New York. 

" The author's humor is his own, and not in the least an imitation of that 

of any other author. His descriptions are bright and entertaining. Of the forty-eight splendid 
full-page illustrations there is not one that would not reflect credit upon a book of infinitely greater 
pretensions, and they are finely printed, too, upon excellent paper."— The Christian Union, N. Y. 



T^EN YEARS IN WASHINGTON : or Life and Scenes at the 
National Capital as a Woman Sees Them. A Record of Personal Expe- 
rience, Interesting Reminiscences, and Careful Observation. By MARY 
CLEMMER, author of " Memorials of Alice and Phoebe Cary," etc., etc. 
Splendidly Illustrated with Superb Engravings, and Portrait of the Author 
on Steel. Royal Octavo. 600 pages. Cloth, $3.00 

"The American people have to thank Mary Clemmer for the best and 

raciest book on life, manners, aud politics at the Capital ever published. Through all the statement 
of fact runs a happy vein of personal experience, aud gossipy penciling of men and manners, such 
as only could be written by one of the brightest and most vivacious lady journalists. * * * It is 
a mine of information, absorbingly interesting and entertaining from the first page to the last."— 
A Ibany (N. Y.) Journal. 



/^LEANINGS FOR THE CURIOUS: From the Harvest 
^~"^ Fields of Literature. A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, 
and Instructive. By CHARLES C. BOMBAUGH, A. M., M. D. Red Line 
Edition, Choicely Printed on Extra Super-calendered Paper, Laid and Tinted. 
Steel-Plate Portrait. Royal Octavo. 864 pages. Cloth, . . . $3.50 

" One of the choicest and most popular gift and holiday books ever pub- 
lished. Dr. Bombaugh is certainly a monstrous sharp fellow at scenting out a good thing. We 
have found his book a perfect museum of curiosities, and vainly have we endeavored, when we 
should have been doing something else, to tear ourselves away from its ever-changing fancies. It 
would take us all day and to-morrow, and another day in the middle of next week to begin to tell 
anything about it. If there is any curious thing a man wants to know, he will surely find it here. 
What the Doctor don't know, in fact, about the curiosities of literature, 'ain't worth 'knowing.' It 
is extremely seldom that we feel in the slightest degree covetous of a volume passing beneath our 
professional spectacles. The Doctor may take it therefore quite as a compliment, that we feel in 
duty bound to own this book, if we have to sell all that we have to pay for it." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" It offers one of the best and most varied collections of ; excerpts * which 
we have ever seen. It supplies us with what we frequently want, the thoughts or materials of 
thoughts with which we have met in reading ; but where, we cannot remember, nor can we recall 
them distinctly. We seek for them in every^corner of the memory, but they are not to be found. 
Their faint impressions are seen, dim, like the ghosts of Ossian, but too distant and too undefined to 
be of any use. On the strength of some such simile, we believe, the Rev. Dr. Todd planned Ins con- 
venient 'Index Rerum;' but this book of 'Gleanings' is still more convenient, lor it gives extracts 
as well as references. It was collated by Dr. Bombaugh, of Baltimore. ' Bid him welcome. This 
is the motley-minded gentleman.' "— New York Herald. 

"This is a rare volume indeed. We know of nothing like it in the whole 

rauge of English literature. It must have been the labor of a life-time to collect so many fragments 
of genius and caprice. We never knew that the mind of man was such a kaleidoscope until we 
turned the pages of this entertaining book. We can otter no entertainment ot higher relish to our 
readers than a glance at ' Gleanings.' Try it."— Churchman, New York. 



.1. D. WORTHIXQTO.V & CO.'S LIST, HARTFORD, COXX. 

A/TY STORY OF THE WAR. A Woman's Narrative of Four 
Years Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army. A Thrilling 
Record of the Author's Personal Work as Field and Hospital Nurse during the 
War of the Rebellion, and of her Labors and Experiences among Sick and 
Wounded Soldiers in Hospitals, Camps, at the Front, and on the Battlefield. 
By MARY A. LIVERMORE. Magnificently Illustrated with Steel-Plate Por- 
trait of the Author, and Portraits of other Famous Nurses, and many Magnif- 
icent Steel-Plate Engravings Illustrating Hospital Scenes and Incidents in the 
war life of the Author ; also a series of Chromo-lithograph Plates of Famous old 
Battle-Flags printed in Sixteen Colors from One Hundred and Twenty-eight 
Engraved Stones, showing all the Colors, Tints, Stains, Rents, Shot-holes, and 
Splintered Staffs exactly as they appear in the original flags, of which these 
plates are in every respect perfect facsimiles. Royal Octavo. 700 pages. 

Cloth, $3.25 

This nevi and superbly illustrated work is NOT — as might be supposed from 
its title — a history of the war, but is the famous Mary A. Livermore's own 
account of her personal work and experiences as a hospital and field nurse 
during the War of the Rebellion, told in full by herself. It is a wholly unique 
work, for it presents what may appropriately be termed the heavenly side of 
the war, and this has never hitherto been written. 

It is replete with the most touching tales, the most stirring anecdotes 
and incidents, coupled with the striking experiences and personal reminis- 
cences of its illustrious author. In every chapter she weaves in anecdote after 
anecdote, incident after incident, story after story, and the reader's attention 
is held spellbound to the end of the volume. ^^ Should every other book on 
the vjar be blotted out of existence this one would completely reflect the spirit and, 
work of the women of the Xorth. In reading it our eyes are often blinded with 
tears ; at other times we are convulsed with laughter at its rich humor. Such 
a work, by so eminent an author, whose power, wisdom, influence, and fame 
are world-wide, is the literary event of our times. 

* * * u -pf/g repeat our belief that no man could write such a book. Not even 
Victor Hugo, with a maximum power of imagination, with broad sympathies with the unfortunate, 
with ability to describe a great battle, but scarcely enough to describe a small one, could have 
written a Les Miserables of the American war ; but Mrs. Livermore has accomplished it. The keen- 
ness of her insight ; the tenderness of her sympathies ; the warmth of her language ; the pathos of 
her style ; the fullness of her details ; the order of the events narrated ; the completeness of the 
scenes described: the vivacity of her expression; combine to make it not merely a unique but the 
only standard record of woman's icork in our civil war. The country has long -been waiting for a work 
of this kind. It must take high rank at once . — Methodist Review, New York. 

" I do not feel that it is within my power to do the work ample justice. It is 

truly a wonderful work. / have never shed so many tears over one book as I have over this one. Many 
times while reading this thrilling story I have said audibly, 'God bless Mrs. Livermore for writing it. 
It is my heartfelt wish that a million copies of it may be sent out through this broad land. It will do 
good whenever and wherever read. I have often asked myself what is the real secret of this book 2 
The only answer I can frame is, lhat it is full of 'heart power.' It comes from the heart. The subject 
is great, the author is great, and the book could not but be great.'''' — Rev. A. M. Collins, Cameron, Mo. 

u It is in short a wonderful story. My experience as secretary of the Iowa 

Sanitary Commission had so prepared me to appreciate this rare story, that after opening it I found 
it difficult to lay it down, even for a moment. Every word of the 700 handsome pages had to be read. It 
was largely done with swelling of heart and not a few tears. Did ever a gifted and eloquent woman 
have such a tale to tell before ? Did ever a tender-hearted, patriotic, and right-loving woman of any 
land do such a work as is here recorded ? Were there ever such memoirs of courage, sacrifice, 
great-heartedness, and love ' stronger than death' to be gathered up and enshrined by the heart and 
mind of one who was so largely a part of it all ? Until sensibility to what is most affecting in real life 
and real woe is dead in men, Mrs. Livermore's book will be a noble one, a moving one.'" — Rev. George F. 
Magoun, D. D., President Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa. 



